Facebook is taking factual circulate in step with every other colossal-scale knowledge heist. In accordance to The File, the social network has sued Ukraine national Alexander Solonchenko for allegedly scraping knowledge for greater than 178 million users. Solonchenko reportedly exploited Messenger’s contact import characteristic by the usage of an automatic design that mimicked Android devices. He fed Facebook millions of cell phone numbers and gathered knowledge each and each time the positioning returned knowledge on accounts with cell phone numbers.
The attacker supposedly performed the advertising and marketing campaign between January 2018 and September 2019 (when Facebook shut down the importer), and started promoting it on a sunless market forum in December 2020. Facebook tracked Solonchenko down after he feeble his forum username and call necessary factors for e mail and job boards. The actual person has also scraped knowledge from assorted targets, Facebook acknowledged, including a important Ukranian monetary institution.
In its criticism, Facebook requested for undefined damages as well to bans combating Solonchenko from accessing Facebook or promoting its scraped knowledge.
That is no longer the biggest such incident. Hackers scraped knowledge for 533 million users thru the identical characteristic. On the different hand, this illustrates Facebook’s determination to crack down on knowledge scraping — or no longer it is spirited to pursue attackers in civil court docket in hopes of discouraging connected knowledge raiding campaigns.
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