An Instagram user from New Jeresy, identified as Brittany Conditi, has filed a lawsuit against Facebook accusing the latter of spying on its users and illegally accessing their mobile cameras while using the Instagram app.
“By obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes, [Facebook is] able to increase their advertising revenue by targeting users more than ever before,” the lawsuit alleges, as quoted by the Washington-based The Hill news website.
“For example, [Facebook is] able to see in-real time how users respond to advertisements on Instagram, providing extremely valuable information to its advertisers.”
The lawsuit comes from media reports in July that the photo-sharing app appeared to be accessing iPhone cameras even when they weren’t actively being used.
In a suit filed last month, Facebook was also accused of using facial-recognition technology to illegally harvest the biometric data of its more than 100 million Instagram users. Facebook denied the claim and said that Instagram doesn’t use face recognition technology.
