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Meta Used Spyware to Access Its Users' Activities on Rival Platforms (observer.com) 32

New documents from a class action against Meta "reveal some of the specific ways it tackled rivals in recent years," reports the Observer.

"One of them was using software made by a mobile data analytics company called Onavo in 2016 to access user activities on Snapchat, and eventually Amazon and YouTube, too." Facebook acquired Onavo in 2013 and shut it down in 2019 after a TechCrunch report revealed that the company was paying teenagers to use the software to collect user data.

In 2020, two Facebook users filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Meta, then called Facebook, alleging the company engaged in anticompetitive practices and exploited user data. In 2023, the plaintiffs' attorney Brian J. Dunne submitted documents listing how Facebook used Onavo's software to spy on competitors, including Snapchat. According to the documents, made public this week, the Onavo team pitched and launched a project codenamed "Ghostbusters" — in reference to the Snapchat logo — where they developed "kits that can be installed on iOS or Android that intercept traffic for specific sub-domains," allowing them "to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage."

The documents also included a presentation from the Onavo team to Mark Zuckerberg showing that they had the ability to track "detailed in-app activity" by "parsing Snapchat analytics collected from incentivized participants in Onavo's program...." The technology was used to do the same to YouTube from 2017 to 2018 and Amazon in 2018, according to the documents. "The intended and actual result of this program was to harm competition, including Facebook's then-nascent Social Advertising competitor Snapchat," the document alleged.

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Meta Used Spyware to Access Its Users' Activities on Rival Platforms

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  • Criminal Liability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Sunday March 31, 2024 @01:45PM (#64359106) Homepage Journal

    If you did this -- prison time, baby!.

    Facebook will pay a small fine and the perps will collect their quarterly bonuses.

    Zuck's urban GOTV efforts have a great RoI in a fascist regime. He may be many things but stupid is not among them.

    • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @02:59PM (#64359236)

      If you did this -- prison time, baby!.

      Nah... Only regular people and billionaires who scam other billionaires go to jail. All the other super-rich criminals just put on a 3-piece suit to go apologize and promise it won't happen again in front of a senate hearing committees.

    • If anyone else did this there would be no issue at all paying users to collect usage data from their device and installed apps.
    • Unless you can convince Americans that they shouldn't have a ruling class then that's how it's going to be. Hell I think you need the first convinced most Americans that they have one in the first place. You're taught when you're too young to be able to think clearly that where a full-on meritocracy with no restrictions. You don't really find out just how much that's bullshit until you take a couple of college level history courses unless you really go looking for it on your own
    • The penalty should be eradication of all user statistics.

  • by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @01:58PM (#64359130)

    This pretty much mirrors a story posted two or three days ago, that one explored how this came about - emails from Zuckerberg.

  • Show me this conspiracy to commit the crime of unauthorized access to a computer (x millions of instances) results in charges and sentencing for everyone who ordered it, developed it, or deployed it.

    My expectation is there will get hot air and perhaps a fine that is less than a rounding error on the annual expenses. And that's if we're lucky.

  • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @02:13PM (#64359150)
    It means that they figured out a stealthier way of getting the same data. User data is the lifeblood of these companies. They will collect it, or they will lose out to a rival that does. All the shouting about privacy and pearl clutching wont change it. I doubt that laws will have much effect either. Pass a law to prevent an internet company from collecting data? You might as well be passing laws that prevents a person from eating and breathing. Theyre gonna straight-up ignore the law. Cause theyll die if they comply.
    • I wonder if they buy our browsing histories from ISPs. Doesn't that seem like the next logical step? We know that e.g. AT&T/TMobile/Verison even sell (or sold) real-time location data. So I assume they sell as much of the browsing history as they have available.

    • What do you think they do with the data? I can think of 3 things, none of which are particularly scary: 1) show you more customized ads, which they can charge more for, 2) give you an improved experience that keeps you on their products longer, thereby viewing more ads, and 3) building products around anonymized, aggregated data to sell to Enterprise customers. Two of these seem beneficial to the user (or at least not harmful) and the third is impersonal.
      • What about the basic right to privacy? https://www.annenbergclassroom... [annenbergclassroom.org]

        Plus, we know the Section 230 companies have been helping with government surveillance, with and without properly vetted warrants.
      • ....2) give you an improved experience

        I don't find it an improved experience

        Two of these seem beneficial to the user (or at least not harmful)

        It harms my blood pressure.

      • 4) Use data collected about you to persuade and manipulate you without your knowledge to think and act the way they want you to. Or, maybe the moral code of these people would never allow that? In my opinion, it should be evident by now that we are all susceptible to such manipulation.

  • Ban TikTok (Score:5, Insightful)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @02:13PM (#64359152) Homepage

    But let's ban tiktok because we can't trust THEM.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @02:37PM (#64359198)

    No just paying fines and hiding behind the company name. People need to go behind bars for this, C-levels among them.

  • Stay safe (Score:5, Informative)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @02:40PM (#64359212)
    The only safe way to use Facebook, is not to use Facebook and its subsidiaries.
  • I read this story a while back and itâ(TM)s incredibly unethical, surprised people involved didnt get fired, idea should have been immediately shut down
  • by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Sunday March 31, 2024 @05:03PM (#64359506)

    ... intercept traffic for specific sub-domains ...

    This is the entire point of Android's "full network access": Anyone who thought this invasion of privacy wouldn't happen (on Android), is beyond stupid. The surprise here is, Apple didn't recognize the invasion of privacy. Isn't that meant to be their unique position? Mostly, because they want to sell access to customer's eyeballs, themselves.

  • This wasn't very long ago, it was in 2019. I bet a ton of other /. folks remember at the time.
    Onavo was a VPN offered by Facebook, it expressely told the users it was gathering their data, and paid the users for that purpose. Users got paid something like $20/month.
    I don't like Facebook but I don't like being misled by dishonest reporting either. This article is a straight up Lie. Not a misunderstanding, not a misstatement, a lie.

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