At the beginning of the year, the news leaped: Facebook had a program to study the behavior of young people through a VPN, including minors, although the virtual private network, VPN Research, dated back to 2016. The social network is back on track with the same concept of pay for personal data, which was announced through the app Study from Facebook.
The main change of Study from Facebook with respect to the previous initiative is that only people over 18 years old can be registered for the time being, in the United States and India. It is not known exactly how much it will pay the participants.
The objective of the Study from the Facebook program is “to learn what apps people use and how they are used“. For this, the social network will try to recruit participants using advertisements in which they will be encouraged to register. The registration is not automatic but requires the approval of Facebook, at which time they can finally download the app.
Facebook highlights the transparency of this new program, stating that at all times the participants will know how the application works and what information they are sharing with Facebook, both in the app and in the registration process and in the description on Google Play. In addition, participants will be reminded every so often that they continue to send data to the program.
The data that will be shared are from the apps you have installed, the time you spend in those apps, the country of the participant, the device, the type of network used and the activity names of the applications in use.
What will not be shared in any case, according to Facebook reports, are the user names or ID of any type, passwords or any personal content of the device such as photos, videos or messages.
It is not clear how Facebook Study will work or if there is a big technical difference with respect to the company’s previous rewarded data collection programs. Still, it will continue to be based on the Applause testing platform.
