Security News > 2023 > August > ICO calls on social media firms to protect user's data from scraping
UK's Information Commissioner's Office, together with eleven data protection and privacy authorities from around the world, have published a statement calling social media platforms to up their protections against data scrapers.
Data scraping is the process of extracting large amounts of publicly available data from websites using automated tools such as bots, collecting information that users have published on that platform.
Although the collected information is already public, if it is combined with private or additional data from other sources, threat actors can use it to launch targeted attacks or to conduct identity fraud, and data brokers or marketers can create detailed user profiles.
"Scraping from social media creates privacy risks and potential harms, such as the information people post online being used for reasons they don't expect, exploited in cyberattacks or used for identity fraud." - ICO. The problem has been highlighted many times recently, causing damage to several social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
The joint statement highlights that publicly available or accessible information is still subject to data protection and privacy laws, and hence, the companies that manage that data are obliged to protect it by implementing anti-scraping measures.
ICO also reminds users of social media platforms that no safeguards are 100% effective against scraping, and it's crucial for them to actively protect their data, starting by limiting the amount of information they post online.