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Israelis Drop Suit Accusing Bright Data of Scraping Minors’ Data

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Bright Data offers social media and e-commerce site scraping tools as a paid service. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Petitioners in Israel have filed a request to drop a proposed class-action suit accusing data-collection company Bright Data Ltd. of selling minors’ personal information that it pulled from Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Instagram.

The motion to dismiss was filed in February, shortly after Meta lost a separate case against Bright Data over data harvesting from its social media platforms, according to an Israeli court filing seen by Bloomberg, which had not been previously made public. 

The motion to dismiss resolved another legal case for the Israel-based startup, which has also fought off lawsuits from Meta and Elon Musk’s X Corp. relating to its data-scraping practices. A California court dismissed a similar complaint from X in May.

Plaintiff Roni Rachmian and his daughter, who was 17 at the time, had relied on some of the arguments presented in Meta’s case and decided to pull their proposed lawsuit as a result of its failure, according to the filing. Rachmian confirmed the development in a text message, although the court has not yet dismissed the case.

A representative for Bright Data has denied that the company scraped minors’ information and said that Bright Data “only scrapes public web data and maintains transparency. This sets us apart and is the key factor in the outcome of each case.” 

Bright Data offers social media and e-commerce site scraping tools as a paid service, which its customers use for competitive intelligence and trend analysis.

 

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