Facebook Removes Russia-Linked Social Media Firm For Allegedly 'Scraping' User Data

Daniyal Sohail Published October 12, 2018 | 02:54 AM

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th October, 2018) Facebook has removed Russian-linked social media firm Social Data Hub for scraping users' information, a company spokesperson said in a statement.

"As part of our efforts to protect people's security, we have recently removed Social Data Hub (SDH), a Russian-linked social media firm, because they were scraping people's information," the Facebook spokesperson said on Thursday.

Facebook removed more than 66 of Social Data Hub's accounts, profiles, pages, and apps from its service, the spokesperson added. Facebook earlier in the day announced that, overall, 559 Pages and 251 accounts had been removed for coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Social Data Hub CEO Artur Khachuyan in a statement said they do not scrape data outside of Russia and are waiting for Facebook to unlock their accounts.

Facebook came under fire for allowing the placement of political campaign ads allegedly linked to Russian entities during the 2016 election. Moscow has repeatedly rejected allegations of election meddling, characterizing them as attempts by US politicians and media to fuel Russophobic hysteria.