Instagram Has Banned Ad Partner For Improper User Data Collection

Instagram has banned a marketing startup from its platform after it determined that the company collected user data improperly. The marketing company in question is Hyp3r which was found by the Facebook-owned social to scrape public information like the user’s profile info, photos, and physical locations for ad targeting purpose.

On Wednesday, the social network sent the marketing company a cease-and-desist letter after acknowledging the activity after earlier reports from Business Insider about the data collection. Hyp3r collected data stored in the Stories feature on the platform, which is made to disappear after 24 hours and is not available via its API.

A spokesperson from Instagram said:

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 where Facebook user’s data was used for the run-up to the US presidential election in 2016, Instagram has been under heavy scrutiny. Since the scandal, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive officer, has testified in front of the European Parliament as well as the Congress to answer questions about how the company handles user data.

Hyp3r did not respond immediately to a comment request while denying breaking Instagram’s rules.

In an email, the startup’s CEO Carlos Garcia said that the company has always enabled authentic, delightful marketing which is compliant with social network Terms of Services and consumer privacy regulations. The CEO added that the company doesn’t view information or content which can’t be accessed publicly by every Internet user.

Part of the data scraped by this startup is from Location pages of Instagram that highlight photos from geo-tagged public accounts. Formerly, anyone could see this data no matter if they’re logged into the network or not.

Recently, Instagram has cut off the access to this data if a user is not logged into their account, which will apple to every company.