International privacy regulators are calling on social media giants to protect their users’ publicly available information from web-scraping, a common business practice in the United States, but one that in other jurisdictions could constitute a reportable data breach.

“Social media companies have obligations under U.K. data protection law to protect the information people post on their platforms,” said Stephen Bonner, head Britain’s top privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office. “We are seeing increased reports of mass data-scraping from social media and remind organisations that such incidents may require reporting to the ICO as a personal data breach.”

This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.

To view this content, please continue to their sites.

Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Why am I seeing this?

LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.

For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]