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Jul 31, 2025
Facebook once bought a VPN app for $120M and turned it into a surveillance tool that spied on 33M+ users' entire phones for years. This app helped Zuck buy WhatsApp for a whopping $19B and break Snap...
Summary
Facebook acquired Israeli VPN app Onavo for $120M and weaponized it to spy on 33M+ users' entire phone activity, helping identify and neutralize competitors like Snapchat by intercepting encrypted data through man-in-the-middle attacks. When Apple shut down Onavo, Facebook rebranded it as 'Facebook Research' and paid teens to install surveillance software until Apple revoked their certificates.
13 tweets
2 min read