Facebook Pays Teens To Install VPN That Spies On Them

A new report from TechCrunch details how 'desperate' Facebook is for data on its competitors. The social media company '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,' a TechCrunch investigation confirms. 'Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity.' From the report: Since 2016, Facebook has been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 per month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android 'Facebook Research' app. Facebook even asked users to screenshot their Amazon order history page. The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook's involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as 'Project Atlas' a fitting name for Facebook's effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe.

We asked Guardian Mobile Firewall's security expert Will Strafach to dig into the Facebook Research app, and he told us that 'If Facebook makes full use of the level of access they are given by asking users to install the Certificate, they will have the ability to continuously collect the following types of data: private messages in social media apps, chats from in instant messaging apps -- including photos/videos sent to others, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and even ongoing location information by tapping into the feeds of any location tracking apps you may have installed.' It's unclear exactly what data Facebook is concerned with, but it gets nearly limitless access to a user's device once they install the app.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.