Facebook Slammed For Offering VPN That Does The Opposite Of What VPNs Do

Virtual private networks (VPN) are supposed to help users get away from the usual data-tracking schemes that both tech companies and governments have been cooking up. They basically cover the users’ tracks, thus allowing them to browse the internet in private. That’s why Facebook is getting slammed right now for offering a VPN that actually tracks its users.

Called Onavo Protect, this is basically a VPN client that the social network acquired back in 2013, TechCrunch reports. Recently, it surfaced on the main Facebook app for iOS devices. To find it, users need to go to the navigation menu and then click on the banner labeled “Protect.” Once it’s clicked, users will be taken to the App Store, where they can then download the app.

Far from offering protection to users against data-tracking, however, Facebook is using the service to collect information pertaining to the activity of the people who are using the app. From a business standpoint, this gives the social network an enormous edge when it comes to finding out what services and apps are seeing the biggest attention.

From a user-protection perspective, however, Onavo is a terrible service. Publications like Gizmodo are already warning people not to download the app. The site even went so far as to call Onavo a “corporate spyware,” which really isn’t that far from the truth.

This is yet another troubling symptom of Facebook’s insatiable hunger to invade its users’ lives in every way it can. Not content with the data it already collects from the billions of users who log on to its app on a monthly basis, the company wants to know even more of what users are doing when they go everywhere else.

Not downloading Onavo cannot be emphasized enough. It protects users from everyone but the biggest threat to their privacy; Facebook.