PRESS: Social network VKontakte suits collectors of users’ open data

MOSCOW, Jan 31 (PRIME) -- Popular social network VKontakte has filed a suit to the Moscow Arbitration Court against firm Double Data and the National Bureau of Credit History as they exploit its open profiles to assess credit strength of users and sell the information to banks, business daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday.

According to the suit, the bureau offers lenders services designed on the basis of Double Data’s technology to weigh borrowers’ credit-worthiness basing on information they disclose on the social network -- names, employment, occupation and the like.

Neither VKontakte, which has around 407 million profiles, nor its users have agreed on commercial use of the disclosed information.

A spokesperson for VKontakte’s owner, Internet giant Mail.Ru Group, said Double Data’s technologies create multiple technical requests to the network that “could affect the response speed for ordinary users, as well as copying, processing and sale of content, including audio, video and photo.”

Double Data’s General Director Maxim Ginzhuk finds VKontakte’s complaints a means of competition since Mail.Ru Group started investing in 2016 in big data and products to assess credit risks for local banks.

Social scoring, or analysis of information from social media profiles, is used by many global companies, for example, Kreditech or Lenddo, which work in 20 countries and examine data from Facebook, LinkedIn and Google.

(60.1618 rubles – U.S. $1)

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