Instagram has banned a marketing company called Hyp3r for saving location data from users’ stories so they could track real world movements. The marketing company was violating the platform rules as they were saving and capturing the data of users.
Facebook who owns Instagram have sent Hyp3r a cease-and-desist letter after the marketing company’s wrongdoings were uncovered by a Business Insider.
In a statement to Sky News, Instagram said: “Hyp3r’s actions were not sanctioned and violate our policies. As a result, we’ve removed them from our platform.
“We’ve also made a product change that should help prevent other companies from scraping public location pages in this way.”
Instagram could now face a fine up to 4% of its global turnover if it fails to inform users and the regulator of a data breach within 72 hours of it being discovered. Last year the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK fined Facebook £500,000 for the “serious breach of data protection law” in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Hyp3r have denied breaking any of Instagram’s terms of service and CEO Carlos Garcia previously said in a statement: “HYP3R is, and has always been, a company that enables authentic, delightful marketing that is compliant with consumer privacy regulations and social network Terms of Services. We do not view any content or information that cannot be accessed publicly by everyone online.”
Instagram’s terms of service are: “You can’t attempt to create accounts or access or collect information in unauthorised ways. This includes creating accounts or collecting information in an automated way without our express permission.”
