Facebook is taking action against those who abuse its platform with a pair of new lawsuits.
On Thursday, the social network announced that it filed two separate lawsuits against developers for violating the company’s terms of service. The lawsuits show that Facebook is trying to send a clear message to companies that abuse its platform.
Facebook first filed a lawsuit against MobiBurn, a targeted marketing company, after it failed to comply with Facebook’s audit request. Facebook alleges that it caught the company collecting user data from Facebook by paying app developers to install a malicious software development kit (SDK) in the app.
In November, Facebook confirmed that millions of users were affected by MobiBurn’s SDK, which compromised personal information like names, email addresses, time zone, and gender. Although Facebook sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company, MobiBurn ignored it.
“Security researchers first flagged MobiBurn’s behavior to us as part of our data abuse bounty program. We then took enforcement action, including disabling apps, sending a cease-and- desist letter, and requesting MobiBurn’s participation in an audit, as required by our policies. MobiBurn failed to fully cooperate,” Jessica Romero, director of platform enforcement and litigation at Facebook, wrote in a blog post.
Facebook also announced a separate lawsuit against Nikolay Holper, who was operating an alleged fake engagement service known as Nakrutka to sell fake likes, comments, views, and followers on Instagram. Facebook said Hopler also did not comply with its cease-and-desist letter.
Digital Trends reached out to MobiBurn to comment on the lawsuit. We will update this story when we hear back.
While Facebook is usually on the other side of lawsuits, the social network did sue the domain name registrar company Namecheap in March for allowing people to register domain names that infringed on Facebook’s trademarks.
