Payment service Venmo joined YouTube and Twitter on Wednesday in demanding that a facial recognition company stop harvesting user images to identify the people in them, which the startup does as part of its work with police.
Venmo said Wednesday it is sending a cease-and-desist letter to New York-based Clearview AI. The small firm has drawn scrutiny following investigative reports in January by the New York Times and Buzzfeed detailing its work with law enforcement agencies and its practice of scraping social media and other internet platforms for images.
“Scraping Venmo is a violation of our terms of service and we actively work to limit and block activity that violates these policies,” said Venmo spokesman Justin Higgs, who said the Paypal-owned mobile payment service is in the process of sending the letter.
Google-owned video service YouTube sent a similar letter to Clearview Tuesday.
“YouTube’s Terms of Service explicitly forbid collecting data that can be used to identify a person,” YouTube spokesman Alex Joseph said in a statement on Wednesday.
