Not Yet The Last Word On Efforts To Scrap Scraping

In our legal update of 3 October 2023 (link), we reported that the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data in Hong Kong ("PCPD") joined the international effort along with eleven other privacy authorities in issuing a joint statement in respect of illegal data scraping practices. The joint statement was circulated to major social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and YouTube. We foreshadowed that we could expect more on this topic in future. As Pádraig Walsh, Tara Chan and Vanessa Leung from our Data Privacy practice report, we did not have to wait long.

In October 2024, the PCPD and the other privacy authorities issued a concluding joint statement in respect of data scraping practices ("Concluding Joint Statement"). This followed feedback from social media companies and other industry stakeholders.