Skip to main content

Apple bans Facebook Research App that allegedly spied on teenagers

Highlights: Apple bans Facebook Research App that accessed root-level information on users’ phones. Facebook allegedly paid up to $20 per month to users to download the VPN app. The social media company denies any wrongdoing, says it took consent to access data.   It seems that Facebook hasn’t learnt from its mistakes. It is already shrouded by several controversies related to data theft, yet new reports of spying and data collection activity crop up ever so often, putting the data protection claims of the Menlo Park-based company under the lens. In the latest development, it is alleged that Facebook was spying on teenagers through an app by accessing all the data passing through their phones in exchange of up to $20 a month. Apple has now banned the app. According to TechCrunch, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that gives it access to users’ data and web activity. The report claimed that Facebook sidestepped the App Store and “rewarded” teenagers and adults to download the Research app. Reportedly, Facebook admitted that it was running the Research programme to gather data on usage habits. The report says that since 2016, Facebook has been paying users from 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,” the report mentioned. Now, the publication says that seven hours after the spying story was published, Facebook said it would shut down the iOS version of its Research app. Reportedly, Apple had already blocked the Research app on the basis of policy violation by the social media platform. According to an Apple spokesperson, the Facebook’s Research app was blocked even before the Facebook ‘seemingly’ pulled it voluntarily. The iPhone-maker said that it revoked the Enterprise Certificate that allowed Facebook to distribute the Research app without going through the App Store. “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organisation. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data,” an Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying. Facebook also issued a statement claiming that it did no do anything wrong. “Key facts about this market research program are being ignored. Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. It wasn’t ‘spying’ as all of the people who signed up to participate went through a clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to participate. Finally, less than 5 percent of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens. All of them with signed parental consent forms,” Facebook told TechCrunch. The Research program will continue to run on Android. This is not the first time that Apple has banned a Facebook app. This VPN app is similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app, another VPN that the social media giant had launched earlier and was found to be collecting user data. The Onavo app was banned by Apple in June and was removed by Facebook in August 2018. The latest incident would certainly worsen Apple-Facebook relationship that is already going through a rough patch. Related Read: Mark Zuckerberg ordered all Facebook executives to switch to Android smartphones Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook took a dig at Facebook claiming that it was too late for Facebook to regulate itself. At that time, Facebook was being criticised for its involvement in the users’ data sharing controversy with now-redundant UK firm Cambridge Analytica. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg replied by saying that the criticism from his counterpart at Apple was unfounded and not at all aligned with the truth. Related Read: Top Tech Stories That Made Headlines in 2018

from Latest Technology News http://bit.ly/2HHgHPW
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This week in Android: It’s weird phone week

We got to play with a lot of cool tech at CES 2019 , but little was cooler than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 . Qualcomm had a reference device  sporting the new SoC and we were able to put it through its paces , including our very own Speed Test G . The results are impressive. In other big news this week, we found out  Motorola is planning on bringing back the Razr phone , made famous in the mid 2000s. We don’t know a lot about the phone itself, but we can make some guesses  based on a patent  from August of last year. Plus, we look ahead at the future of LG and OnePlus , including a new peculiar accessory for LG . Also, we have good news and bad news about Huawei’s security. Here are your top stories for the week 4:20 – Snapdragon 855 performance and benchmarking: Speed Test G, AnTuTu & Geekbench At CES, Gary Sims previewed the  Snapdragon 855 processor in reference hardware. He had some fun with it. 21:45 – You’ll flip for the foldable Motorol...
Post a Comment
Read more

My product launch wishlist for Instagram, Twitter, Uber and more

‘Twas the night before Xmas, and all through the house, not a feature was stirring from the designer’s mouse . . . Not Twitter! Not Uber, Not Apple or Pinterest! On Facebook! On Snapchat! On Lyft or on Insta! . . . From the sidelines I ask you to flex your code’s might. Happy Xmas to all if you make these apps right. Instagram See More Like This – A button on feed posts that when tapped inserts a burst of similar posts before the timeline continues. Want to see more fashion, sunsets, selfies, food porn, pets, or Boomerangs? Instagram’s machine vision technology and metadata would gather them from people you follow and give you a dose. You shouldn’t have to work through search, hashtags, or the Explore page, nor permanently change your feed by following new accounts. Pinterest briefly had this feature (and should bring it back) but it’d work better on Insta. Web DMs  – Instagram’s messaging feature has become the defacto place for sharing memes and trash talk about peopl...
Post a Comment
Read more

First ever drone-delivered kidney is no worse for wear

Drone delivery really only seems practical for two things: take-out and organ transplants. Both are relatively light and also extremely time sensitive. Well, experiments in flying a kidney around Baltimore in a refrigerated box have yielded positive results — which also seems promising for getting your pad thai to you in good kit. The test flights were conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland there, led by surgeon Joseph Scalea. He has been frustrated in the past with the inflexibility of air delivery systems, and felt that drones represent an obvious solution to the last-mile problem. Scalea and his colleagues modified a DJI M600 drone to carry a refrigerated box payload, and also designed a wireless biosensor for monitoring the organ while in flight. After months of waiting, their study was assigned a kidney that was healthy enough for testing but not good enough for transplant. Once it landed in Baltimore, the team loaded it into the container and had it travel 14 ...
1 comment
Read more