Facebook sues Ukrainian company for stealing user data

Facebook has filed charges against two Ukrainians suspected of stealing user data through online quizzes. The data was collected through installed browser extensions, which also injected ads on Facebook.

The two Ukrainians work at Web Sun Group, a company based in Kiev. The activities are said to have started in 2016, until October last year when Facebook blocked access. During that two-year period, the company is said to have offered online quizzes through Facebook, which were intended to install malicious browser extensions.

Facebook users who played such a quiz were silently installed an extension that not only captured personal data sent to Web Sun Group’s servers, but also injected additional ads on the Facebook page. Ads would also have been shown on other social networking sites.

According to Facebook, the accused are guilty of hacking, fraud and violating the terms of the website. The lawyers will try to prove this in the courts in the US state of California in the near future, according to court documents that The Daily Beast has found online. About $75,000 in damage is believed to have been caused and the browser extensions are believed to have been installed by 63,000 mostly Russian-speaking users.