Instagram, the photo and video sharing social network owned by Facebook, kicked out one of its marketing partners from its platform for violating its policies.
The social network’s action comes after Business Insider presented the results of its analysis that Hyp3r is improperly collecting users’ data. Hyp3r is a location-based marketing startup in San Francisco.
According to the business and financial news website, Hyp3r took advantage of Instagram’s “configurations errors and lax oversight” to obtain users’ data including their profile information, posts, photos and places they visited. The marketing startup allows its clients use the data to target users with relevant advertisements.
Business Insider interviewed a number of former Hyp3r employees regarding its practices and examined its marketing materials detailing its capabilities as well as public documents.
In a statement to media outlets, a spokesperson for Instagram, confirmed that Hyp3r broke its rule
“Hyp3r’s actions were not sanctioned and violate our policies. As a result, we’ve removed them from our platform. We’ve also made a product change that should help prevent other companies from scraping public location pages in this way,” said the spokesperson.
