Facebook finally kills its controversial spy app – The Motley Fool

Facebookof (NASDAQ: FB) Onavo has always been controversial. The application, which masquerades as a VPN offering greater privacy to users, is a thinly veiled way for Facebook to spy on users and monitor their activities, which the social media giant would then use to take action. monumental decisions such as acquisitions. For example, Facebook knew BreakThe growth in the number of users in the company was already slowing rapidly, even before Snapchat's parent filed his IPO documents.

More recently, Facebook fell into hot water after using the distribution of an application called "Facebook Research", built using Onavo code, via AppleCertificate of Enterprise program to bypass the App Store. Last year, Apple removed Onavo from the App Store for violating its data collection rules, but it remained available on Google Play. Until now.

The acquisition of Onavo has earned Facebook a lot of value

TechCrunch reports that Facebook has finally decided to close Onavo, thereby removing the Google Play VPN spying app. Given Facebook's ongoing review of data practices and the growing awareness of what Onavo really does, it makes sense that the company removes the controversial application. He had acquired Onavo in 2013 for an estimated $ 200 million, and it is safe to say that Facebook has been getting value for money in recent years.

Facebook's efforts to replicate popular features in other social media applications, including Snapchat's Stories format, were motivated by the information gathered by Onavo. Stories has become one of the most popular sharing formats on social media platforms (even MicrosoftLinkedIn has added stories) and Facebook is just starting to monetize stories.

"People are creating more stories and sending more messages, which means that there are new areas of opportunity for marketers," said the director of the company. Sheryl Sandberg, in the last call for results. "Today, we are also announcing that 2 million advertisers are using Stories to reach customers in our family of apps.

Get out of the shadows

Instead, Facebook is transitioning from market research to paying programs while trying to be clearer about what it does. "Market research is helping companies create better products for users," TechCrunch told Facebook. "We are now focusing on rewards-based market research, which means we are going to end the Onavo program."

Many companies carry out market research in many ways, but Facebook's inconspicuous approach was incredibly bleak. The "Research" application was paying users for unlimited access to their mobile devices, including extremely sensitive information, such as location data and private messages, while Facebook was hiding its role by paying for it. other test companies to be in the forefront of the application. This would have been much less controversial if the social networking giant was simply more transparent about its market research activities, and killing Onavo seems to be a recognition of that fact.

Teresa Kersten, a LinkedIn employee, a subsidiary of Microsoft, is a board member of The Motley Fool. Randi Zuckerberg, former director of market development and spokesperson for Facebook and sister of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a board member of The Motley Fool. Evan Niu, CFA holds shares of AAPL and Facebook. The Motley Fool owns shares and recommends AAPL and Facebook. The Motley Fool owns shares in MSFT and offers the following options: AAPL long calls of $ 150 on January 2020 and short calls of $ 155 on AAPL for January 2020. Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.