Facebook sued for Spying on Instagram users through their Smartphone Cameras

Facebook Inc. is again being sued for allegedly spying on Instagram users, this time through the unauthorised use of their mobile phone cameras.

The lawsuit springs from media reports in July that Instagram appeared to be accessing iPhone cameras even when they weren’t actively being used.

FB denied the reports & blamed a bug, which it said it was correcting, for triggering what it described as false notifications that Instagram was accessing iPhone cameras.

In the complaint filed Thursday in federal Court in San Francisco, New Jersey Instagram user Brittany Conditi contends the app’s use of the camera is intentional & done for the purpose of collecting “lucrative & valuable data on its users that it wouldn't otherwise have access to.”

By “obtaining extremely private & intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes,” Instagram & Facebook are able to collect “valuable insights & market research,” according to the complaint. 

FB declined to comment.

In a suit filed last month, FB was accused of using facial-recognition technology to illegally harvest the biometric data of its more than 100 million Instagram users. FB denied the claim & said that Instagram doesn’t use face recognition technology.

The case is Conditi v. Instagram, LLC, 20-cv-06534, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). 

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