Anyone who can report companies misusing the data of Facebook users, be they images or personal information, can get up to $40,000 (close to Dh150,000) reward, it has been announced.
The social network has just rolled out its Data Abuse Bounty program that promises to incentivise people who can spot apps collecting user data and selling it to another party.
The programme was unveiled amid reports that some 50 million user profiles on Facebook were harvested for the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica in the United States. It is inspired by the existing Data Abuse Bounty campaign that seeks to fight hackers with a $1 million bug reward.
In a statement shared online, Facebook head of product security Collin Greene, said the programme 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.
“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,” he said.
“We’ll review all legitimate reports and respond as quickly as possible when we identify a credible threat to people’s information.”
