Facebook launches controversial ‘Study’ app that will pay users to let it track what they do on their phone and claims it WON’T sell the data to advertisers
- A new program will compensate Facebook users for access to their phone data
- ‘Study’ will collect data on the apps installed, time spent, location, and more
- Users will be compensated for participating but Facebook hasn’t disclosed rates
- Last year Facebook discontinued a similar program after a pair of controversies
Facebook will now pay you to hand its market researchers otherwise out-of-reach data on what you do on your phone.
In a new program it announced this week, called ‘Facebook Study,’ the company says it will compensate users in exchange for an array of data points about exactly how and when they use apps their phones.
That data will include which apps are installed on a users phone, the amount of time spent using those apps, where the user is located, what device they’re using and the type of network, as well as unprecedented, detailed insight into exactly which features are being used within those apps.
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‘Facebook Study’ is the follow-up to a previous and controversial market research program run by the company. Users will be paid to hand over data on their app usage
WHAT IS FACEBOOK STUDY?
A new market research program by Facebook will pay users to collect data on their app usage.
Here’s some of the data it collects:
- What apps are installed on a participant’s phone
- The amount of time spent using those apps
- Participant’s country, device and network type
- App activity names, which may show us the names of app features participants are using
- How much users will be compensated is unclear, but participants must be 18 years or older.
Facebook says it won’t sell data gleaned from the program to third parties and it won’t collect personal info on passwords, user ID, etc.
It’s not yet clear how much users will be paid for letting the company access their app data.
Mail Online has reached out to Facebook for comment.
‘Earlier this year, we announced that we’d be shifting our focus to reward-based market research programs, which means that all research participants are compensated,’ said the company in a public statement.
Previously, Facebook came under fire for running a research app, dubbed ‘Onavo VPN,’ which harvested data from some users as young as 13 years old.
Users who are accepted into Study will be able to review the data being collected by Facebook and can opt out at any time.
The company says it will not harvest data on passwords, user ID’s, pictures, videos, or other content within a user’s apps.
It has also promised not to sell the data gleaned from Study to third parties or use it to target ads.
Instead, Facebook says it is ‘collecting the minimum amount of information needed to help us build better products.’
Facebook was forced to remove the Onavo VPN app from Apple’s App Store after it was found to be collecting a range of data on users’ activity.
After downloading the app, it showed a warning saying downloading the app would ‘allow any app from this enterprise developer’ to be used on your iPhone and may allow access to your data.’
But what it didn’t explicitly say was that the app would collect all of their phone and website activity.
In addition, it would track what apps they downloaded, when they used them and what they do on them.
Study has been unveiled as Facebook attempts to mitigate a number of privacy-related scandals, many of which have taken place over the last several months.
As originally reported by Tech Crunch, that data included in-app private messages, chats from instant messaging apps, including photos/videos, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and location information gleaned by accessing the feeds of location tracking apps installed on participants phones.
In addition to circumventing Apple’s fairly strict rules on the practices of apps offered through its App Store, the program was also derided for its marketing to teens ages 13 to 17.
Study is currently only available to Facebook users ages 18 and up who live in the US and India.
Participants’ ages will be verified through their Facebook pages and secondarily by setting up a PayPal account through which which they will receive compensation, according to The Verge.
To sign up for PayPal, users are also required to be ages 18 and up.
It’s unclear how, if at all, a slew of recent privacy-related scandals will affect users willingness to sign up for Study.
In the past several months alone, Facebook has come under fire for insecurely storing hundreds of millions of users’ passwords in plaintext format as well as using phone numbers provided for two-factor authentication for marketing, advertising, and creating searchable databases of users by phone number.
On top of that, it is still facing the consequences of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which erupted in March and resulted in some 87 million users’ data being harvested and shared with the Trump-affiliated campaign research firm.
FACEBOOK’S PRIVACY DISASTERS
December 2018: Facebook comes under fire after a bombshell report discovered the firm allowed over 150 companies, including Netflix, Spotify and Bing, to access unprecedented amounts of user data, such as private messages.
Some of these ‘partners’ had the ability to read, write, and delete Facebook users’ private messages and to see all participants on a thread.
It also allowed Microsoft’s search engine, known as Bing, to see the name of all Facebook users’ friends without their consent.
Amazon was allowed to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and Yahoo could view streams of friends’ posts.
As of last year, Sony, Microsoft, and Amazon could all obtain users’ email addresses through their friends.
September 2018: Facebook disclosed that it had been hit by its worst ever data breach, affecting 50 million users – including those of Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Attackers exploited the site’s ‘View As’ feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to other users.
Facebook says it has found no evidence ‘so far’ that hackers broke into third-party apps after a data breach exposed 50 million users (stock image)
The unknown attackers took advantage of a feature in the code called ‘Access Tokens,’ to take over people’s accounts, potentially giving hackers access to private messages, photos and posts – although Facebook said there was no evidence that had been done.
The hackers also tried to harvest people’s private information, including name, sex and hometown, from Facebook’s systems.
Facebook said it doesn’t yet know if information from the affected accounts has been misused or accessed, and is working with the FBI to conduct further investigations.
However, Mark Zuckerberg assured users that passwords and credit card information was not accessed.
As a result of the breach, the firm logged roughly 90 million people out of their accounts earlier today as a security measure.
March 2018: Facebook made headlines earlier this year after the data of 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy.
The disclosure has prompted government inquiries into the company’s privacy practices across the world, and fueled a ‘#deleteFacebook’ movement among consumers.
Communications firm Cambridge Analytica had offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia.
The company boasts it can ‘find your voters and move them to action’ through data-driven campaigns and a team that includes data scientists and behavioural psychologists.
‘Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,’ with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claims on its website.
The company profited from a feature that meant apps could ask for permission to access your own data as well as the data of all your Facebook friends.
The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix (pictured), after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump
This meant the company was able to mine the information of 87 million Facebook users even though just 270,000 people gave them permission to do so.
This was designed to help them create software that can predict and influence voters’ choices at the ballot box.
The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump.
This information is said to have been used to help the Brexit campaign in the UK.
It has also suffered several previous issues.
In 2013, Facebook disclosed a software flaw that exposed 6 million users’ phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorized viewers for a year, while a technical glitch in 2008 revealed confidential birth-dates on 80 million Facebook users’ profiles.
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