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Facebook is Pushing Its Data-tracking Onavo VPN Within Its Main Mobile App (techcrunch.com)
TechCrunch reports: Onavo Protect, the VPN client from the data-security app maker acquired by Facebook back in 2013, has now popped up in the Facebook app itself, under the banner "Protect" in the navigation menu. Clicking through on "Protect" will redirect Facebook users to the "Onavo Protect -- VPN Security" app's listing on the App Store. We're currently seeing this option on iOS only, which may indicate it's more of a test than a full rollout here in the U.S. Marketing Onavo within Facebook itself could lead to a boost in users for the VPN app, which promises to warn users of malicious websites and keep information secure as you browse. But Facebook didn't buy Onavo for its security protections. Instead, Onavo's VPN allow Facebook to monitor user activity across apps, giving Facebook a big advantage in terms of spotting new trends across the larger mobile ecosystem. For example, Facebook gets an early heads up about apps that are becoming breakout hits; it can tell which are seeing slowing user growth; it sees which apps' new features appear to be resonating with their users, and much more. Further reading: Do Not, I Repeat, Do Not Download Onavo, Facebook's Vampiric VPN Service (Gizmodo).
In other news, the NSA will now be offering software to keep your data hidden from the NSA.
As a non-user of Facebook, I felt left out of the privacy invasion party. Now I can be like all the cool kids and have my most intimate personal information hoarded by a corporation!
Lighten up, Mark.
Facebook wants to make sure your information stays secure, by redirecting all traffic from your mobile device through their servers to be analysed.
Take your cynical attitude and ram it straight up your stinkhole. I for one am willing to give it a try, who knows, it may be better than nothing at all. We don't need your anti-social rants here, please die in a fire.
You are calling anti-Facebook sentiments "anti-social"? Do you know what anti-social means? It means you. I didn't see the guy you are rebutting telling anyone to die, much less in a fire. Look up anti-social in a dictionary before you type more.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
It allows Facebook to track ALL of your traffic, not just Facebook traffic. I'm guessing this VPN also installs a CA Certificate that allows them to MITM all of your traffic.
You'd have to be absolutely mental to VPN all your traffic through Facebook's servers. They have direct access to all your traffic as it leaves their VPN concentrator. Their wet dream.
People really need to educate themselves about how VPNs work, what they are and aren't good for.
Secure, encrypted traffic between two endpoints? GOOD!
Secure, encrypted traffic between yourself and an actor with unknown motives who by default has to decrypt it before sending it on it's way to the Internet? DOUBLE PLUS UNGOOD!
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
I am shocked, shocked that a megacorp (not to mention that it just happens to be one that was already primarily known for being a piece-of-shit) offers a trojan horse VPN service.
Who could have predicted that Facebook would want to spy on people?! No, I wouldn't have guessed it to be untrustworthy, and you wouldn't have guessed either! Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to using something safe: my Google VPN (unless someone tells me that the FBI's VPN service is better).
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
It depends on the vpn. I suspect in this case the answer is no, not really any better than https. If you want 'secure' vpn look for ones that log nothing. And use HTTPS and don't use their DNS. https://www.pcmag.com/article2...
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I don't know what would be worse. No VPN, or a "free" VPN from a place doing heavy package analyzing. On one hand, I've seen Wi-Fi machinations, be it HTTP intercepts, attempts to get the device to accept an untrusted key as a trusted root CA, and other stuff, so any VPN would be useful to deter that. On the other hand, FB isn't someone whom I would trust to be a privacy provider.
Personally, I'll stick with with my Digital Ocean droplet for my VPN needs. There are fewer parties that can have access to snarfing my network logs... just the DO admins and me.
Whatâ(TM)s the benefit of vpn in the age of https everywhere
It keeps my ISP off my back when I download Game of Thrones.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The question really becomes, which do you distrust more, your local ISP, or the ISP of the location you're hosting your VPN. If you trust neither, then there's no point bothering.
VPN is useful for 2 things:
1) creating a secure link between 2 separate locations over the public internet where you can't afford dedicated transport (e.g. My home, and my office)
2) shifting your traffic from an ISP that's a known bad actor, to one that's only a suspected bad actor (because be honest, are there really any ISPs that are "known good"?)
Number 2 is still relevant for many people, but VPNs are far too commonly used by people who don't understand the technology to try to simply make everything safe, when all it really does in most cases is add complication, cost, and latency.