Facebook Sues Two Over Scraping User Data Through Malicious Browser Extensions

Facebook Inc FB said Thursday that the company and its Irish unit have filed a lawsuit in Portugal against two people who they accuse of scraping user-profiles from its website.

What Happened: The Mark Zuckerberg-led company accused the unnamed defendants of violating its terms of service and Portugal’s Database Protection Law in a statement.

The individuals operated under the business name “Oink and Stuff” and allegedly misled users into installing extensions with a privacy policy that claimed they did not collect any personal information.

The four malicious extensions were made available on Alphabet Inc’s GOOGL GOOG Chrome store, as per Facebook.

“When people installed these extensions on their browsers, they were installing concealed code designed to scrape their information from the Facebook website, but also information from the users’ browsers unrelated to Facebook — all without their knowledge,” the social media company claimed.

Why It Matters: Facebook says when people visited its website the extensions scraped information such as name, user ID, gender, relationship status, age group, and other account details.

The Menlo Park, California-based behemoth is seeking a permanent injunction against the defendants and demanding they delete all Facebook data in their possession. 

Price Action: Facebook shares closed nearly 2.4% lower at $245.64 on Thursday and gained 0.43% in the after-hours session.

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