Facebook paid children as young as 13 to install software which ‘spied’ on them

Sky News
January 30, 2019

Facebook paid children as young as 13 to install software on their phones which allowed the company to collect data on how they used its competitors’ apps, it has emerged.

The software, a virtual private network (VPN) called “Facebook Research”, routes all of the users’ phone and web activity through Facebook’s servers for monitoring.

Its existence was unveiled by news website TechCrunch, which reported that the social media giant has been paying users between 13 and 35 years old up to $20 (£15.25) a month to use the VPN, which it described as “spying” on those users.

Facebook in turn disputed that the app “spied” on users as they had consented to allow it access to every bit of activity that their phone made, and were paid for doing so.