Facebook Sues SDK Maker OneAudience For Secretly Harvesting User Data

Facebook filed today a federal lawsuit in a California court against OneAudience, a New Jersey-based data analytics firm. From a report: The social networking giant claims that OneAudience paid app developers to install its Software Development Kit (SDK) in their apps, and later used the control it had over the SDK's code to harvest data on Facebook users. According to court documents obtained by ZDNet, the SDK was embedded in shopping, gaming, and utility-type apps, some of which were made available through the official Google Play Store. "After a user installed one of these apps on their device, the malicious SDK enabled OneAudience to collect information about the user from their device and their Facebook, Google, or Twitter accounts, in instances where the user logged into the app using those accounts," the complaint reads. "With respect to Facebook, OneAudience used the malicious SDK -- without authorization from Facebook -- to access and obtain a user's name, email address, locale (i.e. the country that the user logged in from), time zone, Facebook ID, and, in limited instances, gender," Facebook said. Twitter was the first to expose OneAudience's secret data harvesting practices on November 26, last year.

OneAudience

[Arthur, KBE]

Embearded and bespectacled Hipster Alert!!

Evil hates competition

[Rick Schumann]

Facebook is just angry that someone else is scraping data that they, of course, feel entitled to be scraping themselves; it's their data, they own it, after all. they consider everyone to be their data-cows, and only Facebook is entitled to milk them.

Re:

[AxisOfPleasure]

Absolutely! Facebook harvested all that data from their gormless users who never read the T&Cs, so they'll be damned if anyone else if going to rip off the ripped off data! You want millions of links to cat videos, pictures of people's kids with spaghetti on their ugly faces, suicide notes, people making up lies about how great their lives are ( just 'cos their live are so boring ) and dicks posing in front of mirrors, get your own!

Re:

[BringsApples]

No, they're not mad that someone harvested data from them. After all, that's what Facebook is for. No, they're mad because they didn't get paid for it. After all, that's what Facebook is for.

Nobody but us

[hdyoung]

Translation: Nobody should be able to harvest this data but us, and we're going to use the court system to enforce this rule.

The tech companies are already engaged in what amounts to "data wars". A bunch of countries are involved too, including my own. Honestly, I have no idea what's right anymore.

Just Desserts

[A10Mechanic]

Hello, pot? This is kettle. It's for you!

Facebook Did It With Onavo

[phalse phace]

This isn't any different than what Facebook did with their Onavo VPN app.

Facebook Collected Device Data On 187,000 Users Using Banned Snooping [slashdot.org]

Facebook's VPN Service Onavo Protect Collects Personal Data -- Even When It's Switched Off [slashdot.org]

Facebook Used Its VPN App To Track Competitors, Documents Reveal [slashdot.org]

Facebook Pays Teens To Install VPN That Spies On Them [slashdot.org]

Thou shlt have no other harvester beside me!

[BAReFO0t]

Anyone thinking what I'm thinking?

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

Anyone thinking what I'm thinking?

Uh, I think so, Brain, but but where will we find a duck and a hose at this hour?

IANAL

[rsilvergun]

but what gives Facebook legal standing in this case (besides gobs and gobs of cash)? If I as a user grant access to the data then I have that right, unless Facebook says that my granting that Access is a violation of the TOS, but then Facebook would need to sue me, wouldn't they?

Malicious activity ... Unless we're doing it.

[expresspotato]

So it's a bit funny that they seem to draw the line when OTHER companies do it, when they're the king of malicious activity with personal information.

The problem

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

The problem was that Facebook wasn't getting its cut.

"Stealing data is OUR gig, homeslice, and if you don't kick some dollars up to da boss then youse bettah get outta town," said a Facebook spokesperson.

They got caught

[Canberra1]

Means, motive opportunity and intent. Normally that would see jail time. Many non-USA have data privacy laws that have been breached. I suspect the SDK has a digital signature. Get a permanent injunction to have all the AV companies add it to their malware digital signature database. In days all those applications will stop working. This will send a clear message to peeping-tom purveyors they are dead meat if they try this again. It is my expectation that digital stores who take a hefty cut/fee from 3'rd