When it comes to privacy and security issues, Facebook has had a bad time over the last several years. Not only have their data practices been scrutinised, but various app policies have led to some difficult question. Furthermore, they have come under pressure due to their treatment of politicians and ads on political content, regardless of whether the statements are true or not.
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Now Facebook is being accused again – this time of spying on users of their Instagram app. A new lawsuit has been filed against the company stating the Instagram uses the cameras on a user’s smartphone without their authorisation. The lawsuit applies specifically to users on iPhones.
According to Facebook, they have done nothing wrong and whatever behaviour in the app that has led to these claims were merely bugs in the software. It has said it is correcting these bugs, which led to the triggering of notifications that Instagram was accessing iPhone cameras.
The lawsuit was filed this week in the federal court in San Francisco, where one of the complainants, Brittany Conditi from New Jersey, claims that the app’s use of the camera is intentional and done for the purpose of collecting “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to”. By “obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes”, Instagram and Facebook are able to collect “valuable insights and market research”, according to the complaint.
In a similar, but unrelated complaint last month, Facebook was accused of using facial recognition technology to illegally harvest the biometric data. According to Facebook, Instagram doesn’t use facial recognition.
Are you comfortable with your data and security on platforms like Facebook? Let us know in the comments below.
