TechCrunch:
Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access to network traffic in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity, a TechCrunch investigation confirms.
Facebook admitted to TechCrunch it was running the Research program to gather data on usage habits, and it has no plans to stop.
At what point will the government step in and do something about the rampant abuses Facebook is consistently subjecting its users to?
Apple’s response was a good first step. But I would love to see them bring the full hammer on companies (like Uber did before Facebook) that violate their users’ privacy and do a full pull of their apps until FB goes through an audit of their consumer privacy behaviors and policies. They probably won’t because if Uber is too big to come down hard on, then FB definitely is.
Twenty years in jail for all top executives should do the trick.
I’d guess it’ll likely require direct, demonstrable FB incursion into the personal lives of sitting representatives themselves for enough of them to understand how much the problem exceeds the value of Facebook’s lobbyists.
Damn. FB is shameless.
How is “we’re paying you to give us this information, that we ARE TELLING YOU we are taking” any abuse, let alone a rampant abuse?
Hell, it’s not even spying, when you know it’s happening and consent to it. Spying is covert; this is open.
“I would not want to do this” is not an abuse; it’s a difference in priorities and concerns.
(And, yeah, teens. 5% of the total users, per TC, and no mention of how many were adults at 18-19, or if parental consent was required?
Please.)