@dbarabander

Let’s quickly review the BrandTotal case to see why. BrandTotal was an analytics company that collected Facebook ad data using browser extensions used by end users and its own scraping services. Facebook really did not like this. It used contractual (TOS, cease and desist) and technical (CAPTCHAs, account bans) methods to block BrandTotal, but BrandTotal kept on collecting anyway. Facebook sued BrandTotal under the CFAA. In analyzing the claim, the court made key distinctions between different BrandTotal products/services. These products/services varied in whether they had access to user credentials. From the court’s reasoning, we can see a pattern emerge: whether BrandTotal violated the CFAA came down to whether it had access to user credentials. Here’s a summary table depicting this:

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