This is how Facebook knows what you do with your mobile

This is how Facebook knows what you do with your mobile

Onavo Protect is the tool that lets the social network know how users behave outside their app

"Connect to the world". This is one of the most repeated phrases by Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and internalized by all employees of the social network. A dream that the American is about to fulfill.

Last June, Zuckerberg announced on its Facebook wall that the platform had 2,000 million users . If the social network were a country, this would be the one with the largest population. But the entire Facebook universe continues to grow, since WhatsApp accumulates more than 1,000 million users and Instragram supports 700 million.

This expansion of the Zuckerberg networks has managed to "unite", as Zuckerberg points out in its wall in June, and continues to search for the connection of the planet. Although, the journey accumulates shadows that Facebook tries to overcome.

A click on a publication, a photo uploaded, a 'like' to the page of the preferred musical group. These are daily actions that, already more than 2,000 million Facebook users, perform daily in the social network. Digital gestures that allow engineers to perform a pattern of behaviors and tastes of the members of this small universe.

This data collection and a good analysis of them allow us to track trends and launch improvements in the network to achieve the new objectives and comply with the company's motto: "connect to the world".

Onavo would have allowed Facebook to know what users do outside of their application

But what happens beyond Facebook? The looks of Mark Zuckerberg's engineers go beyond their products, according to The Wall Street Journal, and have a name Onavo. According to several specialized consultants, the Onavo Protect app is present on more than 24 million Android devices and since 2013 belongs to Facebook.

Born in Israel, at the beginning of the decade, it emerged with the purpose of reducing its consumption of mobile data through a 3G connection, and also protects browsing data through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) network, a local network connection that allows the devices to be connected to each other through the internet.

Although Facebook is more interested in its operation, since when you open an application or a web page, the app redirects traffic so that each action is recorded on the servers of the social network . With this simple action the engineers of Zuckerberg can know what users do with their phones (where they navigate, what applications they use, etc.).

Facebook bought Onavo in 2013 and is on more than 24 million Android devices

As revealed by WSJ thanks to Onavo, Zuckerberg looked at WhatsApp and filled out a $ 19 billion checkbook and is also serving as a roadmap for the attack on Snapchat. The app warns in its conditions of use that "your information can be shared with affiliated companies" .

But the US authorities, according to compiles WSJ, can violate the country's regulations "instead of using that data for advertising purposes, they are using them as competitive intelligence," explains Ashkan Soltani, former CTO of the Federal Trade Commission.

Facebook has already suffered European sanctions on competition after the purchase of WhatsApp. In mid-May, Brussels fined the company of Mark Zuckerberg with 110 million euros for lying in the process of buying the instant messaging app.

Now Facebook defends itself by ensuring how they use Ontavo's information "they have been using market research services for years". "We use Onavo, Annie App, comScore, and publicly available tools to help us understand the market and improve all of our services." When people download Onavo to manage their data usage and help ensure their connection, we are clear about the information we collect. and how it is used, "they add.