Greg's Corner

Facebook is paying teens to allow them complete access to their phones

It appears that Facebook is starting 2019 the same they left off in 2018, continuing to be criticized for questionable practices when it comes to user privacy. Even more unfortunately, this time the target for Facebook’s latest privacy mishap appears to target children. Not satisfied with exposing the personal data of millions of users to third parties, Facebook is now being accused of paying minors to allow Facebook to have complete access to the teens’ phones in order for Facebook to accomplish what they call ‘marketing research’.

Tech news stalwart TechCrunch first broke the story yesterday about discovering an app that Facebook was using where people from the ages of 13-35 could make $20 a month for letting Facebook track all of their phone activity. Participants in the program were even encouraged to refer their friends to the program in order to make more money. The app requires the user to give root access to Facebook and in some cases requires you even send Facebook screenshots of your Amazon purchases. At first, Facebook defended the practice then hours later pulled the app from the iOS App Store. Its fate on Android devices is still unknown.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8uCj69dcY%5D

While the majority of people Facebook is paying are probably over 18, there are too many kids under 18 who are being asked to compromise their privacy in order to get a $20 gift card. This seems like this is the age group that Facebook wants the most information on since so many reports claim that Facebook is hemorrhaging teen users and they can’t seem to reclaim the dominance in the market they once had with teen users. To call this practice predatory is an understatement.