Marketing company scraped MILLIONS of users’ data from Instagram 

Share this:

Coming as no surprise to anyone: yet another third-party company scraped the data of millions of Facebook-owned Instagram users over the course of a year. Facebook, and Facebook-owned companies like Instagram, has always been reckless when it comes to your personal data and privacy.

Scandal after scandal it seems that nothing is ever done to protect the data of consumers from these unaccountable centralized Silicon Valley data silos. Another day, another privacy scandal that will go unpunished.

A bombshell report has revealed how Instagram’s ‘lax oversight’ allowed a San Francisco-based startup to collect data on millions of its users without their knowledge – including the disappearing photos posted as Stories.

The Facebook-owned company sent a cease and desist letter to marketing firm HYP3R – one of its vetted advertising partners – after an investigation by Business Insider uncovered the shocking violations.

Instagram has since banned HYP3R from its platform, but not before the company was able to siphon out the personal data of millions for roughly a year, according to Business Insider.The firm has not yet revealed exactly how many users were affected, and says it is still investigating the volume of the issue.

In a statement to Dailymail.com, a Facebook spokesperson reiterated that the startup went against its policies and has since been banned.

‘HYP3R’s actions were not sanctioned and violate our policies,’ the spokesperson said.

 

‘As a result, we’ve removed them from our platform. We’ve also made a product change that should help prevent other companies from scraping public location pages in this way.’

 

But, HYP3R – which describes itself as a ‘location-based marketing platform that helps business unlock geosocial data’ – told Business Insider it did not break any rules in the way it gathered data. 

Archived Source: San Francisco marketing company scraped MILLIONS of users’ data from Instagram | Daily Mail Online