Lawsuit Alleges Instagram Is Spying On You Through Your Camera

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have a rather unnerving and uncanny way of surfacing ads on products that you talk about with to your friends, to the point where some have floated conspiracy theories that these companies are actually spying on users through their cameras and microphones.

Now a new lawsuit has been filed against Instagram in which according to Brittany Conditi, the person filing the lawsuit, she claims that the company is using your phone’s camera to spy on you and to collect “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to”.

This comes on the heels of an earlier report in which it was reported that Instagram was accessing the iPhone’s camera even when the app was not active. Facebook, who owns Instagram had denied the report at that time, instead blaming the issue on a bug for triggering “false notifications”.

The complaint notes that by “obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes”, both Facebook and Instagram are able to collect “valuable insights and market research”. Facebook has since declined to comment on the lawsuit, although given that the company does not have a good track record when it comes to user privacy, this is definitely not looking good for them.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Instagram, Legal, Privacy