Project Atlas: Facebook has been secretly paying Iphone users to install an all-surveilling "VPN" app

The "Facebook Research" VPN is an app that circumvents Apple's ban on certain kinds of surveillance by cloaking itself as a beta app and distributing through the Applause, Betabound and Utest services, rather than Apple's App Store: users get up to $20/month, plus referral fees, to run the app, which comes with a man-in-the-middle certificate that lets Facebook intercept "private messages in social media apps, chats from in instant messaging apps including photos/videos sent to others, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and even ongoing location information by tapping into the feeds of any location tracking apps you may have installed."

It's not clear which of these data-types Facebook is harvesting from users of the app, which is codenamed "Project Atlas."

The program recruits users aged 13 to 35, and has been running since 2016. Facebook confirmed that it uses the app to "gather data on usage habits."

Facebook previously faced disgrace and crisis when it was revealed that Onavo, a so-called VPN app that was actually grabbing a huge tranche of data from users; Apple subsequently removed Onavo from its app store. Facebook does not distribute the "Research" app through Apple's own beta-test program, choosing instead to launder it through third parties. Facebook is pretty clearly violating Apple's policies in doing this.

Once installed, users just had to keep the VPN running and sending data to Facebook to get paid. The Applause-administered program requested that users screenshot their Amazon orders page. This data could potentially help Facebook tie browsing habits and usage of other apps with purchase preferences and behavior.