#Facebook sues individuals for offering to scrape data, gather likes

Facebook said on Thursday it filed lawsuits against individuals in Europe and the US for abusing its platforms to offer automated tools for scraping users’ personal data and gathering likes.

The social network said the defendant in the US lawsuit operated a data scraping service, called “Massroot8,” which improperly collected data by asking users to provide their Facebook login credentials.

The defendants in the European lawsuit operated a Spain-based fake engagement service that provided automation software to receive fake likes and comments on Instagram, Facebook said.

“This is one of the first times a social media company is using coordinated, multi-jurisdictional litigation to enforce its terms and protect its users,” the company said here in a blog post.

Shares of the company, helmed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were trading basically flat on Thursday afternoon, at $235.47.