Facebook Says Russian Firms ‘Scraped’ Data, Some for Facial Recognition
Facebook Says Russian Firms ‘Scraped’ Data, Some for
Facial Recognition
By Jack Nicas Oct. 12, 2018
SAN FRANCISCO — On the same day Facebook announced that
it had carried out its biggest purge yet of American accounts peddling
disinformation, the company quietly made another revelation: It had removed 66
accounts, pages and apps linked to Russian firms that build facial recognition
software for the Russian government.
Facebook said Thursday that it had removed any accounts
associated with SocialDataHub and its sister firm, Fubutech, because the
companies violated its policies by scraping data from the social network.
“Facebook has reason to believe your work for the
government has included matching photos from individuals’ personal social media
accounts in order to identify them,” the company said in a cease-and-desist
letter to SocialDataHub that was dated Tuesday and viewed by The New York
Times.
Facebook gave the companies until Friday to detail what
data they had taken and then delete it all.
The case illustrates a new reality for Facebook.
SocialDataHub and Fubutech have been around for at least four years, relying in
part on Facebook data to build products that might alarm some civil-liberty
advocates.
As Facebook is taking a closer look at its own products
amid increasing scrutiny and public outcry, it is finding more examples of
companies that have been exploiting its global social network for questionable
ends.
SocialDataHub and Fubutech also present another challenge
because, Facebook said, at least some of their data collection occurred through
web scraping.
Scraping is a rudimentary technique in which computer
programmers can pull information off a website. It is difficult to detect and
prevent, Facebook said. Scraping can pull any data that’s left public on a
Facebook profile — and, theoretically, more private data about the user’s
Facebook friends.
Artur Khachuyan, the 26-year-old chief executive of
SocialDataHub and Fubutech, said in an interview Friday that Facebook had
deleted his companies’ accounts unfairly.
Fubutech does build facial-recognition software for the
Russian government and uses Facebook data, but it scrapes Google search results
for that information — not Facebook, he said. And SocialDataHub’s main product
— a system that assigns scores to Russian citizens based on their social-media
profiles for insurers and banks — required permission from the users it rates,
he said.
Mr. Khachuyan said that he taught Russian journalism
students how to scrape the web and that two of them had scraped Facebook for
the public profiles of their classmates. He believes Facebook mistook the
students’ activity for his companies’ work.
“Maybe it’s a reason to deactivate our accounts,” Mr.
Khachuyan said. “But I don’t know why Facebook deletes Instagram account of my
dog.” That account, for “Mars the Blue Corgi,” had 176 followers.
Katy Dormer, a Facebook spokeswoman, rejected Mr.
Khachuyan’s claim that Facebook had conflated his students’ activity with the
actions of his companies.
“We don’t take these actions lightly,” she said. “The
fact we took the action and sent the letter means we saw enough evidence.”
Facebook’s removal of SocialDataHub and Fubutech reflects
a larger problem for the social media company as it evaluates its relationship
with third-party apps that have access to people’s Facebook data.
In the wake of reporting by The New York Times and others
that the political firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of more than 87
million Facebook users through a third-party app, Facebook announced that it
was reviewing its data-sharing policy with apps. After an audit, the company
said it was suspending 200 apps. Some have since had their access to Facebook
restored.
Mr. Khachuyan said the letter from Facebook had surprised
him, particularly because his companies have been operating the same way for
years.
“All in Russia know about us for minimum four years,” he
said. “I don’t know why that Facebook sent that only now.”
He said Fubutech scraped data from the web, particularly
Google search and the Russian search engine Yandex, to build a database of
Russian citizens and their images that the government can use for facial
recognition. “We don’t know exactly what they do with it,” he said.
“Maybe government clients connect our software to C.C.
cameras,” Mr. Khachuyan said, referring to closed-circuit cameras. “Maybe they
connect it to social profiles.”
Mr. Khachuyan compared Fubutech to Palantir, the Palo
Alto, Calif., tech company that does data analysis for the American government.
At one point in a 30-minute phone interview, he said the Russian Defense
Ministry was a client, but later said he could not name Fubutech’s government
clients.
His other firm, SocialDataHub, works with insurers and
banks to evaluate potential customers. Between 30,000 and 50,000 Russian
citizens have given SocialDataHub permission to analyze their Facebook profiles
to assign a score between zero and 10, which insurers and banks use to help set
rates or approve credit cards.
“If you’re a bad client, you have zero to three,” Mr.
Khachuyan said.
He said his companies, which share 52 employees in
Moscow, complied with Facebook policies; they use Facebook data only when it is
public and available on Google search, or if the user has granted them
permission. He said the techniques were also legal in Russia.
“It’s a trick in our federal law to use that data, but
that works only with Russian citizens,” Mr. Khachuyan said.
At the top of the SocialDataHub’s website, there is a
single line: “We know everything about everybody.”
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