What is scraping and how it was used to breach data at Facebook, LinkedIn

Facebook has previously filed cases against companies that have developed tools to scrape its user data; LinkedIn also said scraping violates its terms of service

The past week saw massive data breaches at two tech giants- Facebook and LinkedIn. While neither denied that customer data had been leaked, both said it wasn’t hacked from their systems, but had been scraped.

Facebook data of around 533 million users had leaked online, according to a report by Business Insider on April 3.

This includes the data of six million users from India, and includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses.

India accounts for about 410 million Facebook users, among its largest markets.

In response, Facebook said, “It