Meta Platforms, Inc prosecuted Octopus Data, the U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese national high-tech enterprise Shenzhen Vision Information Technology Co.
Octopus Data allegedly offered data scraping services for Facebook and Instagram.
Meta also prosecuted a Turkey-based individual, Ekrem Ateş, for allegedly setting up automated Instagram accounts to scrape data from 350,000 Instagram users.
Octopus allegedly charges its customers to access a software product called Octoparse to launch scraping attacks. Customers could also pay Octopus to scrape websites directly.
Customers had to give access to their accounts, allowing the software to glean data usually only available to logged-in users, including Facebook friends, email addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, and Instagram followers….