Facebook sues software developer who ran over 20 Instagram clone sites

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook has filed a lawsuit in the US against Turkish software developer Ensar Sahinturk for scraping peoples publicly-visible information from Instagram in order to create a network of over 20 clone sites.

According to the company, Sahinturk used automation software to scrape public profiles, photos and videos from more than 100,000 Instagram accounts without Instagram’s permission and in violation of Facebook terms.

“He then published this data on a network of clone sites, where anyone could enter an Instagram username to view Instagram user profiles, pictures, videos, stories, hashtags and locations,” Facebook said in a statement on Thursday.