Based on a statement by comparitech, it seems that around 235 million profile data from accounts originating from TikTok, Instagram, as well as Youtube, have been exposed through the use of scraping. For those who are not familiar with scraping, it is an automated process that collects user information from public webpages from the aforementioned social media platforms.
While scraping is generally not allowed, it is very hard to detect the automated scraping bots due to the fact that it’s very hard to distinguish from a regular website visitor. Below is a list of information that the scraping bot collects.
Profile data that was collected
- Profile name
- Full real name
- Profile photo
- Account description
- Whether the profile belongs to a business or has advertisements
- Statistics about follower engagement, including:
- Number of followers
- Engagement rate
- Follower growth rate
- Audience gender
- Audience age
- Audience location
- Likes
- Last post timestamp
- Age
- Gender
With all that said, what are your thoughts in regards to the profile data leaks? Let us know on our Facebook page and for more updates like this, stay tuned to TechNave.com.
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