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Facebook accused of snooping on Instagram users through phone cameras

WION Web Team
New DelhiUpdated: Sep 18, 2020, 06:19 PM IST
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Facebook Photograph:(Reuters)

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The fresh lawsuit is latest in a long list of allegations of privacy breach against Facebook.

A lawsuit filed against Facebook has accused the company of spying on its users through the phone camera via Instagram. Brittany Conditi, an Instagram user filed the lawsuit against Facebook in a Federal court in San Francisco, Bloomberg reported.

Conditi said that the app was using the phone camera intentionally to obtain “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to”, said Bloomberg.

Facebook has declined to comment on this.

The fresh lawsuit is latest in a long list of allegations of privacy breach against Facebook.

In July this year, media reports suggesting Instagram accessed iPhone cameras in unauthorised manner were published. The reports said that such access was gained without the user's knowledge.

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Facebook had refuted the claims and had blamed such an access on a bug.

The allegations did not stop after that. Facebook was accused of obtaining biometric data of its users using facial recognition technology. It was alleged that such data was gathered without the users' knowledge or consent.

Facebook had refuted the claims and had said that the photo-sharing app did not use facial-recognition technology.