Earn as Facebook learns
Users to be paid through app that tracks habits
FACEBOOK has launched an app that will pay users to share information with the social media giant about which apps they’re using.
The company previously rolled out two similar apps that tracked what activities people did on their phones.
But both were shut down after drawing criticism for infringing on privacy and violating Apple’s App Store guidelines.
Facebook said the new app, called Study, is different from the previous two and was built from scratch. Close Change
It is only available on the Google Play Store, although Facebook said it might work to expand it to iOS in the future.
The new app will collect information about which apps people are using and for how long, including which app features are used.
That could give Facebook valuable insight into how people use its competitors’ services.
Facebook said it would not track passwords or account IDs and would periodically remind people that the app was collecting their data. A previous market-research app from the company, called Research, got in hot water earlier this year when a report found that teens were using it and it was sidestepping Apple’s guidelines.
Apple booted it from its app store and Facebook eventually shut it down completely.
The other app, Onavo Protect, was a virtual private network service used to keep information private in public settings – but it was also collecting information about apps and sending it to Facebook.
That app, too, has been shut down.
Facebooks appears to be acting in a more upfront manner this time, said Lance Cottrell, chief scientist for the cybersecurity firm Ntrepid.
“They are being a little less intrusive with this one,” he said, noting that Facebook says it won’t collect some of the more sensitive information from people’s phones such as photos and web searches.
What it will do, Mr Cottrell suspects, is give Facebook further advantage over competitors because it will be able to tell how long apps are being used, and even which features within them are most popular.
Facebook already has a step up when setting up such market research, Mr Cottrell said – not many other companies could release a similar service and get as many participants as Facebook is bound to.
But privacy experts are concerned users will still not know what information they are sending. Facebook is not saying how much it will pay.