Data harvesting is one of the main services offered by the company./Screen shot, Bright Data
In January 2023, Meta filed a lawsuit against Israel's Bright Data, alleging that it violated the terms of use on Facebook and Instagram when it automatically collected, collected and sold user information to third parties, in violation of the terms of the contract with it.
According to the indictment, Bright Data registered on social networks under several different names and collected information while using technological tools that prevented Meta from blocking the operation.
Afterward, according to the lawsuit, Bright Data posted the data harvesting on social media, sold the data to third parties for a total of $867,000, and even helped others harvest data themselves using its tools.
Although Bright Data boasts strict adherence to global privacy regulations, a quick glance at the company's website and media accounts proves unequivocally that data harvesting is its main activity.
How can the two occur together and how is it possible that society was acquitted?
The answer lies in the source of the information and the fact that it is public information - that is, information that is visible to everyone even without connecting to a user account on the platforms, according to the ruling of the court in San Francisco.
But before we dive into the details of the lawsuit, let's go back to the beginning for a moment to understand some basic details.
What is data harvesting anyway?
Data scraping is an automatic way to collect large amounts of information from social networks in a way that harms the privacy of users.
The collected information is used, among other things, for identity theft, carrying out cyber attacks, selling to advertising agencies, gathering intelligence and gathering political information.
In general, data harvesting leads to a lack of control by social network users over their personal information, as it may be shared long after it has been deleted from the sites where it was shared in the first place.
However, according to the ruling of the District Court in San Francisco last week, Meta failed to prove that Bright Data collected the information while she was connected to the profiles she created on social networks, which would have given her the opportunity to access non-public information, and therefore she did not violate the terms of use.
In addition, it was determined that Meta did not prove that protected data of social network users was collected and sold by Bright Data.
It is interesting to note that Meta was previously a client of Bright Data when it was used to harvest user information from e-commerce sites, as revealed during the trial.
This fact shows the double morality of Meta in all its glory and is perhaps the one that eventually led to the puzzling decision, based on the standard of "the one who rejects in the same way rejects".
Is harvesting information from public profiles legal?
It turns out that it is.
The current ruling is consistent with the US Supreme Court's ruling in a similar lawsuit filed by LinkedIn against the Haikyu company, at which time the court ruled that harvesting information from public profiles is similar to entering a public area. The court likened LinkedIn's ban on harvesting information from public profiles to a store ban Passers-by should look at her shop window.
The court distinguished between information that is open to the public and anyone can access it, and information that is blocked by some kind of technological barrier, such as a password. In addition, the ruling stated that it is not self-evident that LinkedIn is entitled to claim on behalf of the network's users, and that these do not necessarily expect privacy since they choose share the information on social networks.
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Will the ruling be valid when it comes to a claim by the users themselves?
Bright Data overcame Meta's lawsuit in the United States, but in Israel a request for a class action is pending against it from June 2023, demanding to stop the harvesting of the information of Facebook and Instagram users in Israel and to compensate them for the harvesting of the information it carried out without their express consent.
The representative plaintiff, Roni Rahmian, bases his request on the lawsuit filed by Meta against Bright Data and notes that the lawsuit reveals a serious violation of the privacy of platform users in general and especially when it comes to the privacy of Israeli minors.
"It is fitting that information about them should receive solid protection from commercial entities such as Bright Data and its commercial customers, to whom it sold information," Rahmian wrote in the lawsuit.
The contract between the companies, it is claimed in the application for the class action, is for the benefit of a third party - the users - and therefore they are entitled to request the cessation of the data harvesting and even receive compensation for the information collected by Bright Data.
As of writing these lines, nothing has progressed with the request for a class action and no response has been submitted on behalf of Bright Data.
It is likely that Bright Data will now file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit outright following the American ruling.
At the same time, it will be interesting to see whether in Israel they will align themselves with the American ruling in regards to data harvesting or with the 12 other countries that have signed a statement warning against data harvesting and calling on social networks and websites to protect users from harming their privacy.
And you were very private
Time will tell whether the victory of Bright Data is the loss of all of us.
While many countries are fighting to protect our online privacy, it seems that American law allows the harvesting of information when it is not "locked".
It must be remembered, as stated in the request for a class action in Israel, that many internet users are minors and teenagers who are not aware of the consequences of the information they share.
Even many adults, who publish information and then delete it - are exposed to the fact that the information has already been collected and transferred to third parties or saved in some database.
Therefore, while Bright Data and information harvesting companies fight the technology giants for ownership of the Internet, the main loser is our constitutional right to privacy.
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