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0 pointsvitus1y ago0 comments

> They hired Snapchat users (via a testing services provider ) to let meta observe their usage of Snapchat.

> Something akin to paying someone to let a meta researcher sit by your side and observe while you use the app.

Onavo Extend and Onavo Protect positioned themselves as providing consumer-oriented benefits (bandwidth reduction and security, respectively).

> The news here is paying for someone to “test” a competitors’ app.

Facebook acquired Onavo in 2013, so this was 100% a first-party effort to turn their first-party products into spyware.

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motoboi1y ago

yeah, you should read the doc in the link, they explain why they couldn't use Onavo to simple man-in-the-middle snapchat users, hence the project to use the testing service provider to hire test subjects which would install a MITM solution to unencrypt snapchat (and later youtube and amazon).

Normal Onavo users were not subject to the decryption (although they were providing Meta information about overall snapchat's marketshare).

vitusOP1y ago

Which doc and which link are you referring to? This isn't anywhere in the class action discovery documents as far as I can tell.

TC reported back in 2019 on Facebook using various third-party testing services to distribute their first-party Facebook Research app, so I'm not even convinced that point is new (or that they paid the third parties to do any actual research).

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/

Facebook would probably have run up against app store policies by trying to install their root cert on existing apps, which seems to be the most likely justification for installing this additional app through third-party channels. It's also a lot easier to avoid suspicion when it's part of a bunch of click-through screens as part of app setup (especially when you're dangling money in front of users, even just $20/month).

motoboi1y ago

This is in the second page of the document that started this hacker news entry.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsvitus1y ago0 comments

> They hired Snapchat users (via a testing services provider ) to let meta observe their usage of Snapchat.

> Something akin to paying someone to let a meta researcher sit by your side and observe while you use the app.

Onavo Extend and Onavo Protect positioned themselves as providing consumer-oriented benefits (bandwidth reduction and security, respectively).

> The news here is paying for someone to “test” a competitors’ app.

Facebook acquired Onavo in 2013, so this was 100% a first-party effort to turn their first-party products into spyware.

0 comments

motoboi1y ago

Normal Onavo users were not subject to the decryption (although they were providing Meta information about overall snapchat's marketshare).

vitusOP1y ago

Which doc and which link are you referring to? This isn't anywhere in the class action discovery documents as far as I can tell.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/

motoboi1y ago

This is in the second page of the document that started this hacker news entry.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse