back to article Facebook tells Portuguese court that a biz called Oink And Stuff makes profile-harvesting browser extensions

Facebook and its Irish subsidiary on Thursday announced the filing of a lawsuit in Portugal against two people for allegedly scraping Facebook profile data and other browser info using malicious Chrome extensions. "Using the business name 'Oink And Stuff,' the defendants developed browser extensions and made them available on …

  1. Chris G

    My precious!

    The precious is mine!

    Smash the nasty appes for stealing my precious!

    Gollum!Gollum........

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: My precious!

      this deserves a meme

  2. don't you hate it when you lose your account

    Do as I say not as I do.

    Springs to mind, as does fu@# you to those who utter those contemptible words.

    1. Danny 2

      Re: Do as I say not as I do.

      C'mon, intent is important. I would strongly recommend nobody else smokes and drinks as much as I do, but that doesn't mean I'm likely/able to quit.

      It's a 100 years since the first magician sawed a person in half as a stage trick, so I googled that last week. I would strongly recommend you search for 'sawing a lady in half' rather than 'sawing a person in half'. The former is cute, misogynist but harmless. The latter is disturbing.

    2. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Do as I say not as I do.

      Meh. In FaecesBook's defense, they do have a user agreement saying "all your things are ours" and people happily sign it,

      1. scrubber

        Re: Do as I say not as I do.

        Literally no-one has signed it.

        And almost as many have read it.

  3. Headley_Grange Silver badge

    Google Store

    "Google has been struggling to mitigate the risk of malware in its Chrome Web Store for a decade..."

    I suspect that's because Google's definition of malware includes the overriding "Has it gone public and are we getting bad press about it?".

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    There's a fairly obvious way to avoid getting your Facebook profile harvested.

    1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

      Never visit a page that has "Like us on Facebook" on?

      Or disable javascript. Completely.

  5. MiguelC Silver badge
    WTF?

    So we have an American company suing a Myanmar company, who claims to be audited by a Romanian company, in Portugal.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      reported on a british website that get's more and more US-like(vile politic) commenters on it's pages

    2. doublelayer Silver badge

      And using a subsidiary based in Ireland. I mean, we have to list all the countries that have nothing to do with Portugal so we can get the full effect of the "Why?" feeling. Maybe they've got servers there or something? Facebook's going to have to provide a good reason when the courts start to read their complaint.

  6. chivo243 Silver badge
    Terminator

    Don't makes me angry dare

    I works this side of duh street, you wanna a turf war? You want somma dis?

    Nice thuggery there FB...

  7. ThatOne Silver badge
    Devil

    Yeah, that will surely help

    > Its latest gambit includes more comprehensive privacy disclosures

    ...Not worth the electrons they are written with: Their only reason to be is so Google can deflect responsibility and say "It's the devs, they lied to us! We're the victims here!".

    The Real-World equivalent would be like declaring that all persons with criminal intent should wear a large, bright orange hat. You can bet they will, indeed. All of them. After all, what does a criminal have if not his honesty and honor...

  8. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I suspect there must be a underhand reason why Facebook has chosen to file court proceedings in Portugal against a company from Myanmar? As surely even if Facebook win the case, a Portuguese court has no power to order Oink and Stuff to do anything if they are indeed based in Myanmar.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      I'd expect the court will be able to decide if they can take the case based on the legal standing of Facebook and the defendant in their jurisdiction and if any penalties can be enforced. The UK has a number of specialist courts which commonly rule on cases where neither party has local presence but can show a link between the case and the UK. Liable cases being the most commonly known about so long as it can be shown the people in the UK would have seen the relevant material, eg published on the internet.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Underhanded or overlooked?

      "which claims to be located in Myanmar"

      Just perhaps they know more about the developers' location than you do? You RussoKazakhNepaleseSpratlicans are all alike!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Oink And Stuff is (or was) a 2-person company in Coimbra.

    4. Tomato Krill

      If they have Portuguese assets then I would assume that irrespective of where the ownerships lies those assets are at risk

    5. Spanners Silver badge
      Facepalm

      @mark l 2

      Is the reason something to do with how good USians are at Geography?

  9. MrBanana

    Personal data ?

    "A Facebook spokesperson declined to provide a copy of the lawsuit filed in Portugal because it contains personal data, the sharing of which could be deemed a privacy violation"

    The irony is strong in this one.

    1. Rich 2 Silver badge

      Re: Personal data ?

      Indeed. I also like the line

      "They misled users into installing the extensions with a privacy policy that claimed they did not collect any personal information."

      'cos faecesbook never misled anyone about data collection, did they?

  10. scrubber

    Jar Jar Binks

    WhatsApp you say?

  11. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Like a bunch of rats fighting over some gristle

    Flush them all

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Myanmar?

    The chances of a legit software developer being based in Myanmar is very low. They are still largely isolated from the world

    1. fpx

      Re: Myanmar?

      Myanmar is home to 50+ million people. The chances that many of them are excellent software developers is quite high, actually.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pot meet kettle...

  14. fpx
    Boffin

    Softpedia

    My understanding is that Softpedia merely "certifies" that the software that you download is free from viruses. Their site harks back to the days before Sourceforge when people downloaded shareware packages from dodgy sites, where popular software was re-packaged with added trojans. Well people still do that, though there are now better alternatives.

    So the seal of approval from Softpedia that the download is free from third-party malware is meaningless here, when the software is nothing but malware in the first place.

    1. el kabong

      In the first place faecebook is a form of malware too, albeit an accepted form of malware

      Faecebook does harm to people and to society, people who willingly choose to be on faecebook have tacitly accepted to be victims of that kind of malware that faecebook provides to society.

      The malware that oink provides does not differ much from the malware faecebook provides, if one is allowed the the other should be allowed too, the facts should by themselves be more than enough to render the whole case moot, malware of that kind is legit on faecebook because people have accepetd to be spyed on.

      The malware oink provides does not differ from the malware faecebook provides, if faecebok are alowed to do it then oink should be allowed too.

      1. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

        Re: In the first place faecebook is a form of malware too, albeit an accepted form of malware

        I think you've missed the point.

  15. croc

    Uh... Is FB suing Oink over copyright provisions or what? I mean the pot calling the kettle black certainly is not a case that would be taken seriously by any court is it....

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