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Facebook’s Research app isn’t the only VPN to harvest user data
Popular China-linked VPN services have patchy privacy policies, study says
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Another day, another Facebook backlash. People are outraged after it emerged that Facebook had been paying teens to install a secret VPN that lets the company spy on what they’re doing on their phones.
VPNs are supposed to help you protect your data. But the Facebook flap shows that there’s one party that has full access to everything you’re doing: The VPN provider itself. And it’s a concern with several Chinese-owned VPNs, which reportedly send data back to China.
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Recently, Top10VPN -- a review site for VPN services -- looked into the world’s 30 most downloaded free VPN apps. Among them, VPN Master, Turbo VPN, and Snap VPN claim the right to gather private information like IP address, time zone, and IMEI (the unique number that identifies your phone). They also state that they may route personal data to China.
Another Chinese-owned app, VPN 360, notes that they may log and share an individual’s usage data with government authorities and law enforcement when required by law.
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Unlike Facebook’s semi-secret “market research” app, these VPN services are readily available for everyone to download from Google Play and the iOS App Store.
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