Mastodawn

Dan Gillmor Mar 27, 2024

Well, this is a transcendent level of evil: Facebook bought a VPN company and deployed it, in part, to spy on its competitor's users.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/

It's a reminder that VPNs have their own risks, beyond technical ones if operated incompetently -- namely, that you have to trust the VPN company itself.

UPDATED to reflect which users were being spied on.

Facebook snooped on users' Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal | TechCrunch

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.

TechCrunch

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Dr Daniel, Photon Shepherd🇸🇪🇦🇺Mar 27, 2024

@dangillmor FB and their evil shit aside, it's baffling that people think they have more reason to trust a VPN company over their ISP.

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A.L. Blacklyn

@DanielEriksson my ISP is the most reliable and affordable option in my physical area for internet. However, it's known for spying, selling user data, and lobbying against civil rights. I know this, so I don't want my ISP collecting all the website addresses I visit.

That's one way a VPN is supposed to help.

There are people for whom Facebook is their ISP. Facebook's Israeli-based VPN was probably advertised as a way to be more secure to people who couldn't easily find any advice about it.