In 2013, Facebook bought an Israeli company called Onavo for about $120 million. At the time, the app was marketed as a helpful VPN, a tool to protect your data, reduce mobile usage, and keep your online life secure.

What most users didn’t know: installing Onavo gave Facebook complete visibility into your phone. It allowed the company to monitor every app you opened, how long you used it, every website you visited, and even when you did it. Over 33 million people downloaded the app, believing they were protecting their privacy, when they were actually opening the door to corporate surveillance.

According to publicly available court documents and regulatory findings, Facebook used Onavo to identify trends and detect rising competition. The company monitored usage of popular apps like Houseparty, YouTube, Amazon, and Snapchat, collecting detailed behavioural data to assess which ones were becoming threats.

Snapchat was the biggest target

By 2016, Snapchat’s popularity was exploding, but its traffic was encrypted, so Facebook couldn’t see exactly how users were engaging with it. That led to the creation of “Project Ghostbusters”, a covert effort to bypass Snapchat’s encryption and get a closer look at what users were doing on the app.