A secret program called "Project Ghostbusters" saw Facebook devise a way to intercept and decrypt the encrypted network traffic of Snapchat users to study their behavior.
What the title and bot don’t mention: They did so by installing spyware on phones of users of a vpn they acquired:
After Zuckerberg’s email, the Onavo team took on the project and a month later proposed a solution: so-called kits that can be installed on iOS and Android that intercept traffic for specific subdomains, “allowing us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage,” read an email from July 2016. “This is a ‘man-in-the-middle’ approach.”
What’s more:
Later, according to the court documents, Facebook expanded the program to Amazon and YouTube.
That’s debatable. In my estimation, by using a “service vpn” you’re giving advertisers some other kind of demographic information, namely that you’re the kind of person that pays for a vpn.
Is that better or worse than giving advertisers the data point that you’re high-tech knowledgable and browse personal accounts from a server in a datacenter?
Yeah, that’s why I think it’s debatable. It’s a lot easier to make those decisions on traffic coming from a known vpn ip, versus all vps providers in the world - many of which have corporate uses.
On the other hand - if you’re smart enough to set up a vpn, you’ll also be smart enough to set up ad blocking, so the point is kinda moot anyway. Plus you’ll be a lot less likely to have your traffic logged opposed to a service vpn.
What the title and bot don’t mention: They did so by installing spyware on phones of users of a vpn they acquired:
What’s more:
Obligatory this is why you shouldn’t use a free/cheap vpn.
Can’t all vpns do this though?
Yups. You’re usually better off running one yourself.
This only works if you don’t want the privacy enhancing aspect of advertisers not tying your activity to an IP address.
Beyond more safely using open Wi-Fi or bypassing a censoring ISP, there isn’t much reason there.
That’s debatable. In my estimation, by using a “service vpn” you’re giving advertisers some other kind of demographic information, namely that you’re the kind of person that pays for a vpn.
Is that better or worse than giving advertisers the data point that you’re high-tech knowledgable and browse personal accounts from a server in a datacenter?
Yeah, that’s why I think it’s debatable. It’s a lot easier to make those decisions on traffic coming from a known vpn ip, versus all vps providers in the world - many of which have corporate uses.
On the other hand - if you’re smart enough to set up a vpn, you’ll also be smart enough to set up ad blocking, so the point is kinda moot anyway. Plus you’ll be a lot less likely to have your traffic logged opposed to a service vpn.