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Journalism of Courage
A new set of unsealed documents released by a federal court in California has revealed that Facebook was snooping on Snapchat, YouTube and Amazon users. Codenamed ‘Project Ghostbusters’, the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company was intercepting and decrypting network traffic of people using Snapchat.
The documents, which are part of a class action lawsuit between consumers and Meta show how the company was analysing network traffic of users interacting with its competitors. To get around past encryption used by services like Snapchat, Facebook developed a special technology to see what users were doing on other platforms.
After Zuckerberg sent the email, developers at the company suggested using Onavo, a VPN-like service that Facebook had acquired in 2013. A month later, the team working on Onavo came up with a solution that involved installing ‘kits’ on both Android and iOS devices.
In another email, Facebook said the technique, which is basically a man-in-the-middle attack, allowed “us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage.” According to the court documents, Facebook later expanded the program to snoop on YouTube and Amazon.
Meta’s Onavo unit is not new to controversies. The team has a history of using various techniques to collect user data. After acquiring Onavo from an Israeli firm, Meta had used the service to spy on its competitors via the millions of people who were using the app.
