After Facebook, Google disables Screenwise Meter app that it paid users to install

After Facebook was widely criticised for its app that was accessing mobile and web activity of some iPhone users, Google has now stepped out to announce that it has disabled its own iPhone app that it had paid some users to install to study their digital habits. Google and Facebook have faced criticism from privacy experts for distributing their research apps through a program Apple had created for companies to distribute apps to employees. “The Screenwise Meter iOS app should not have operated under Apple’s developer enterprise program — this was a mistake, and we apologize,” Google told The Verge. [caption id=“attachment_5861341” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] Google at CES 2019. Image: Google[/caption] Facebook’s ‘Research App’ came to light through a TechCrunch article yesterday,  which revealed that the social media giant was paying teens off with $20 a month to install their Facebook Research app VPN, which would allow Facebook to get complete access to their phone’s data. Hours later, Apple announced that it has banned Facebook from using its Enterprise Developer Certificate because the company had improperly used it to track the web-browsing habits of teenagers. Probably, for the fear of the same happening to it, Google disabled its own data tracking app, which was also in clear violation of Apple’s distribution policies. Now, we wait to see if Google will face the same fate as Facebook too.