[HN Gopher] Facebook security app used to 'spy' on competitors (...
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       Facebook security app used to 'spy' on competitors (2019)
        
       Author : lifeisstillgood
       Score  : 38 points
       Date   : 2020-09-06 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
        
       | s09dfhks wrote:
       | pretty sure everyone knew this was coming. I could sense every
       | hackernews' eyeballs rolling in unison when facebook announced
       | they were offering a VPN
        
       | vijaybritto wrote:
       | I was joking to my friends that FB was offering a VPN only to spy
       | on connections to other companies so that they can acquire them
       | after a certain level. But its shocking to see that this actually
       | happened
        
         | neilalexander wrote:
         | It's just another day in Facebook.
        
       | llimos wrote:
       | It's an old article. From my point of view I'm interested in
       | hearing the story of the developers tasked to work on this kind
       | of thing. Do they know what they're building and do it anyway
       | because their manager told them to? Or are they kept in the dark
       | and each build a small part so they can't tell what it's going to
       | be? Or does the company estimate which teams would be ok with
       | building something a little shifty and give it to them?
       | 
       | I'd be especially interested to hear any insider perspectives,
       | from any $bigcorp
        
         | im3w1l wrote:
         | Likely internal propaganda. About how this doesn't really harm
         | the consumer. About how you protect them from worse things. And
         | that its all laid out in the EULA.
        
         | marcinzm wrote:
         | Some people just don't care and are proud of the technical
         | challenge irrespective of ethics. I once had a CTO candidate
         | boast about writing desktop spyware back in the day and how
         | he'd hacked all our families (his words, not mine, he brought
         | up the topic).
        
           | tmpz22 wrote:
           | You didn't quit in the spot?
        
             | marcinzm wrote:
             | We didn't hire him, the whole team had very strong and very
             | negative feedback once the shock wore off.
        
       | Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote:
       | Should be marked as (2019) and while interesting, Onavo was shut
       | down in Feb 2019 [1]
       | 
       | " Since the acquisition, Onavo was frequently classified as being
       | spyware, as the VPN was used to monetize application usage data
       | collected within an allegedly privacy-focused environment. In
       | August 2018, Facebook pulled Onavo Protect from the iOS App Store
       | due to violations of Apple's policy forbidding apps from
       | collecting data on the usage of other apps. In February 2019, in
       | response to criticism over a Facebook market research program
       | employing similar techniques (including, in particular, being
       | targeted towards teens), Onavo announced that it would sunset the
       | Android version of Protect as well. "
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Magnets wrote:
       | Didn't google get caught doing this recently?
        
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       (page generated 2020-09-06 23:00 UTC)