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.
