What the title and bot don’t mention: They did so by installing spyware on phones of users of a vpn they acquired:
After Zuckerberg’s email, the Onavo team took on the project and a month later proposed a solution: so-called kits that can be installed on iOS and Android that intercept traffic for specific subdomains, “allowing us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage,” read an email from July 2016. “This is a ‘man-in-the-middle’ approach.”
What’s more:
Later, according to the court documents, Facebook expanded the program to Amazon and YouTube.
Obligatory this is why you shouldn’t use a free/cheap vpn.
Can’t all vpns do this though?
Yups. You’re usually better off running one yourself.
This only works if you don’t want the privacy enhancing aspect of advertisers not tying your activity to an IP address.
Beyond more safely using open Wi-Fi or bypassing a censoring ISP, there isn’t much reason there.
That’s debatable. In my estimation, by using a “service vpn” you’re giving advertisers some other kind of demographic information, namely that you’re the kind of person that pays for a vpn.
Is that better or worse than giving advertisers the data point that you’re high-tech knowledgable and browse personal accounts from a server in a datacenter?
How the fuck is no one in jail over this?
Because money
My guess is they put it in the terms and conditions of the vpn.
People don’t mind that mainstream society is built by abusing them. It’s not for us, it’s for them. This isn’t freedom?
