In 2016, Facebook, now Meta, carried out a secret campaign to spy on users’ data. Snapchat, according to court documents. A way for the company to keep the advantage over its rival, while it was gaining popularity.
“ Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted, we don’t have analytics on them. Given how quickly they are growing, it seems important to find a new way to get reliable analytics about them. Maybe we need to do panels or write custom software. You should find a way to do it “, wrote Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, in an email dated June 9, 2016. His teams executed, the project ” Ghostbusters », in obvious reference to the Snapchat logo, was then born.
A VPN to carry out a “man-in-the-middle attack”
These are the shocking revelations from court documents, brought to light as part of a group consumer action against Meta in California. To successfully decrypt Snapchat data, the company’s engineers turned to Onavo, a VPN that Facebook acquired in 2013. It was shut down in 2019, when US media exposed the service’s use to spy on Snapchat. mobile activity of adolescents in exchange for remuneration.
To access Snapchat information, Meta developed a so-called man-in-the-middle attack, which involves intercepting internet traffic flowing from one device to another on a network. In particular, it allows you to read the data contained therein, such as usernames, passwords and other in-app activities.
Thanks to “ kits » which could be installed on users’ iOS and Android devices without them knowing, Meta was able to get its hands on the traffic « for specific subdomains », accessing content which is however encrypted.
Amazon and YouTube also targeted
According to the prosecution’s lawyers, “ the intended and actual result of this program was to harm competition, including Snapchat, Facebook’s emerging social advertising competitor “. This same technique was later used on other rival services, Amazon and YouTube. The facts could violate the American wiretapping law, which prohibits the intentional acquisition of the communications of others.
This is a new scandal for the social media giant, which seemed to have put its sulphurous reputation aside since its name change in 2021. In a statement, a spokesperson for the company downplays the facts, assuring that “ the plaintiffs’ claims are baseless and have nothing to do with the case “.
Source : TechCrunch
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