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Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#11

Post by jondubois »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #5
irpapakons wrote: post #2

It's ethically dubious that the advertised function of the app is a VPN to "keep you and your data safe", while the reason it exists is so that all phone traffic goes to Facebook. This is not clear from the app description -- there is only a generic message about monitored app use, to which users are so used as to not pay any attention. > "The app's privacy policy says it may share information with "affiliates" that…

"ethically dubious", i consider it criminal; though they probably got some (lawyer written) fine print to say it is not so.

Yes, it sounds like malware. Had any other company done this, it would have caused outrage but for some reason Facebook just seems to get away with everything.

I remember how big a deal the News International phone hacking scandal was; this actually seems much worse.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#12

Post by daenney »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #5
irpapakons wrote: post #2

It's ethically dubious that the advertised function of the app is a VPN to "keep you and your data safe", while the reason it exists is so that all phone traffic goes to Facebook. This is not clear from the app description -- there is only a generic message about monitored app use, to which users are so used as to not pay any attention. > "The app's privacy policy says it may share information with "affiliates" that…

"ethically dubious", i consider it criminal; though they probably got some (lawyer written) fine print to say it is not so.

I would be interested to hear from people with knowledge of EU and US law how shady this is in their respective jurisdictions.

I'm having a hard time imagining what they did is OK, but I'm probably wrong.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#13

Post by rubatuga »

I was considering using this app about 2 years ago, since I wanted to try out a VPN and this was near the top of the list in the Apple App Store. However, one glance at the fact that it was owned by Facebook made me “nope” out immediately. I’m glad to have made the right decision.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#15

Post by teej »

irpapakons wrote: post #2

It's ethically dubious that the advertised function of the app is a VPN to "keep you and your data safe", while the reason it exists is so that all phone traffic goes to Facebook. This is not clear from the app description -- there is only a generic message about monitored app use, to which users are so used as to not pay any attention. > "The app's privacy policy says it may share information with "affiliates" that…

I once sat in on a pitch from an antivirus software company who was selling the ability to look at the full browsing history of people who had visited your website. You could see all of their searches, if they visited competitors, and more. Most of the time I get annoyed of the FUD of "they're selling my data!" but this was different. It was true and it was scary.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#16

Post by netsharc »

Having Xposed and XPrivacy on my old phone, it's really interesting what permissions apps request. For example FB Messenger requests the permission to enumerate installed packages: https://wroot.org/posts/enumerating-android-installed-applic...

and IIRC also enumerates running tasks. So it's probably simple to do analytics for the whole phone...

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#18

Post by afandian »

teej wrote: post #15
irpapakons wrote: post #2

It's ethically dubious that the advertised function of the app is a VPN to "keep you and your data safe", while the reason it exists is so that all phone traffic goes to Facebook. This is not clear from the app description -- there is only a generic message about monitored app use, to which users are so used as to not pay any attention. > "The app's privacy policy says it may share information with "affiliates" that…

I once sat in on a pitch from an antivirus software company who was selling the ability to look at the full browsing history of people who had visited your website. You could see all of their searches, if they visited competitors, and more. Most of the time I get annoyed of the FUD of "they're selling my data!" but this was different. It was true and it was scary.

Why not name them?

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#19

Post by mpcovcd »

wonder_bread wrote: post #14

Sounds a lot like Amazon owning Alexa (the website service), Google owning double click, etc.

I don't think that's a reasonable comparison. Alexa data is public, most of it can be accessed for free, and the rest at a reasonable price. Doubleclick is an advertising platform, it doesn't give insight into competitors metrics unless those competitors choose to share that information.
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