SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) — Facebook has filed suit in U.S. District Court Northern District of California against two Ukrainian web app operators who allegedly administered fraudulent third-party applications to obtain user data from the social media site.
According to the March 8 court filing, Gleb Sluchevsky and Andrey Gorbachov operated the fraudulent web applications between 2016 and 2018. They were designed to "deceive their users into installing malicious browser extensions," the suit claims.
The defendants then allegedly "scraped" information from app users' social media profiles and then injected ads when the users visited various social networking sites and into the app users' news feed.
The fraudulent applications included "Supertest," FQuiz," "Megatest," and "Pechenka," according to the court filing. Facebook also alleges the defendants "gained unauthorized access to Facebook protected computers through the app users' browsers."
In late 2018, Facebook suspended the defendants' accounts after an investigation revealed the "malicious extension."
Facebook seeks a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction and permanent injunction enjoining the defendants from soliciting, storing or using Facebook login information, accessing Facebook's website, creating Facebook accounts or any activity that violates or diminishes the social media's quality, performance or functionality.
The lawsuit alleges violations for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, breach of contract and fraud.
Facebook seeks a jury trial, pre- and post-judgment interest and all just and proper relief. It is represented by attorneys David J. Steele, Howard Kroll and Steven Lauridsen of Tucker Ellis LLP in Los Angeles.