Just like Facebook, Google too offered gift cards to teens to monitor their iPhones

Just a day ago, it surfaced that Facebook was paying people in exchange of gaining complete access of their social media, as a part of research program. Turns out Google too have been monitoring people’s usage of iPhones in a similar way.

Where Facebook came under fire, Google too followed after it was reported to distribute a private app that monitored and gather data on how people use their iPhones in exchange of gift cards as rewards. However, Google has now disabled the app, reported Tech Crunch.

Google’s VPN app, called ‘Screenwise Meter’, relied on Apple’s enterprise program allows for the distribution of internal apps within a firm. Google’s app is part of a program that has been around 2012 and first started tracking household web access through a Chrome extension and a special Google-provided tracking router.

Google, Facebook, Apple, iPhone, Facebook Research, Screenwise Meter, iOS, VPN

Users above 18 years were allowed to download it, but those of 13 and up years were allowed to join the program if they are in the same household with parental consent. Google gathered data such as the sites visited, apps used, TV shows played, device IP address, and cookies.

In a statement to The Verge, a Google spokesperson acknowledged that the Screenwise Meter iOS app should not have operated under Apple’s developer enterprise program and that it was a mistake for which they apologize. The representative informed that they have now disabled the app.

Moreover, following Facebook’s report of gaining access in exchange for $20, Apple banned and revoked the certificate that enabled Facebook’s ability to run and distribute internal iOS apps, denying distribution to the pre-release of Facebook, Instagram and more.

As of for Facebook, lawmakers have lashed out at the firm and how it might interfere in future privacy legislation and ‘wiretapping teens should never be permissible’.