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Facebook offers handsome rewards for reports of data abuse

Last updated: 11:13 10 Apr 2018 EDT, First published: 11:02 10 Apr 2018 EDT

Cell phone displaying the Facebook app
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Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) disclosed on Tuesday that it is launching a data bounty program to people who report any misuse of data by app developers.

“We committed to launching this program a few weeks ago as part of our efforts to more quickly uncover potential abuse of people’s information,” said Collin Greene, head of product security at Facebook Inc. “The data abuse bounty, inspired by the existing bug bounty program that we use to uncover and address security issues, will help us identify violations of our policies.”

The social media giant, which has been roiled by criticism after the Cambridge Analytica privacy fiasco, said the data abuse bounty program will reward people with first-hand knowledge and proof of cases where a Facebook platform app collects and transfers people’s data to another party to be sold, stolen or used for scams or political influence.

“Just like the bug bounty program, we will reward based on the impact of each report. While there is no maximum, high impact bug reports have garnered as much as $40,000 for people who bring them to our attention,” noted Greene.

Facebook said that if it saw data abuse, it would shut down the offending app and take legal action against the company selling or buying the data.

“We’ll pay the person who reported the issue, and we’ll also alert those we believe to be affected,” added Greene.

Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to kick off his week of Congressional testimony Tuesday at 2.15 pm. ET.

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