Facebook paid young people monthly in exchange for spying on their data

Facebook is mired in a constant tragicomedy. At the end of last week the news leapt that Facebook could have encouraged children to spend money on games. A few hours ago we learned that Europe has asked Facebook and Google to fight against the 'fake news' in the elections. This time the news has to do with Facebook Research, an application to dpi today extinct in some platforms that encouraged its users to install certificates to control all the data of the phone in question in exchange for a monthly economic compensation. As we can read on the TechCrunch website, The company had allowed access to the program for 13-year-old boys and girls.

17 euros per month for selling data to Facebook through Facebook Research

The Facebook Research service (currently Onavo Atlas), despite being little known in Spain, reached around 2016 a good popularity rate among users in the United States and other countries. This was (and is) based on a simple VPN application that after accepting all the terms and conditions of use, analyzes all the data of our phone to sell them later to Facebook.

That's what Facebook Research looked like. Image extracted from Quora.

We talk about data such as browsing history, the exchange of private messages with our contacts or even the items that we download. I did it in exchange for an economic compensation that started with $ 5 during the first month and $ 20 (about 17 euros to change) the rest of months. In addition, Facebook Research account (because it still exists) with a referral service for which we will earn about 10 dollars for each person registered through our referral link.

The controversy resides in that said service accepted people even with 13 years of age up to 35, according to TechCrunch. Currently, the application of Atlas (the predecessor to Research) warns all users that if the application is installed on a child's mobile phone, the child's father or mother will be rewarded. way that if they were adults. In no case will these be compensated directly, as if Research was doing something more than three years ago today.

Installation of the Facebook Research certificate in iOS. Later it was expelled from the App Store for this same reason.

Facebook's response to all this controversy is that, according to data from the Research program, less than 5% of users of the platform were minors. It will be necessary to see if the relevant authorities take action in the matter to verify the information provided by the company.

Source | TechCrunch

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