Facebook is suing a Ukrainian programmer for allegedly scraping and selling publicly accessible information from millions of Facebook users.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the Northern District of California federal court, accuses freelance programmer Alexander Alexandrovich Solonchenko of using automated means to scrape phone numbers and Facebook user IDs off roughly 178 million accounts in 2018 and 2019.
Facebook argues that Solonchenko violated Facebook’s terms of service, which prohibit users from doing anything unlawful, misleading or fraudulent.
The tech giant has disabled Solonchenko’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and revoked his access to the company’s websites. Its lawsuit asks for a jury trial.
