Facebook pays teens upto $20 to install VPN app that spies on them: Report

Our goal is to enable new opportunities for businesses of all sizes, but especially for the more than 60 million small businesses across India, said Facebook.

In a desperate bid to collect data on its competitors, Facebook has reportedly been secretly paying people to install a VPN which allows the social media giant to access all the user’s phone and web activity.

As per a report in TechCrunch, Facebook has been paying users aged between 13 and 35, up to $20 a month plus referral fees, to install the ‘Facebook Research’ app.

The report also states that Facebook went as far as asking users to take screenshots of their Amazon order history page. This is a clear indication of the Facebook's strategy which intends to extract and use data on its competitors.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Facebook was found trying to siphon off user's data. Apple had previously banned Facebook's 'Onavo Protect app' from its App Store in June last year, after it was found involved in similar activities.

Upon installation 'Facebook Research' app gains access to a user's network traffic which allows the social media networking giant to decrypt and analyse the user's activities.

This program was managed through Applause, BetaBound and uTest—all of which are beta testing services— which lets Facebook to hide its involvement.

The report states Facebook has in fact acknowledged its active participation in order 'to gather data on usage habits'. The tech-giant has also confirmed that it has no plans to stop any time soon.

Despite being one of the most prominent social media sites on the internet, Facebook has always shown interest in expanding beyond the definition of an online connecting portal.