Facebook Inc said on June 18 it filed lawsuits against individuals in Europe and the United States for abusing its platforms to offer automated tools for scraping users’ personal data and gathering likes.

The social network said the defendant in the US lawsuit operated a data scraping service, called “Massroot8”, which improperly collected data by asking users to provide their Facebook login credentials.

The defendants in the European lawsuit operated a Spain-based fake engagement service that provided automation software to receive fake likes and comments on Instagram, Facebook said.

"This is one of the first times a social media company is using coordinated, multi-jurisdictional litigation to enforce its Terms and protect its users," the company said in a blog post.

 - Reuters