Social media platform awarded $365,000 in scraping suit

Courts Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Data Scraping Consumer Protection

On December 8, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California enjoined a data trading company (defendant) from accessing a social media platform (plaintiff), and ordered it to pay $361,790 in attorney fees and $3,640 in court costs to the platform. According to the complaint, the defendant unlawfully scraped the profiles of over 90 million of the plaintiff’s users before selling the data. The complaint specifically alleged that the defendant sold “in-depth insights into the demographics and psychographics of influencers and their audiences.” The order enjoined the defendants from, among other things: (i) accessing or attempting to access the plaintiff’s platforms; (ii) developing, offering, and marketing software or computer code intended to automate the collection of data; and (iii) engaging in any activity that disrupts the plaintiff’s platforms.