Apple restores Facebook's Enterprise Certificate for internal employee apps on iOS

After yet another jolt to Facebook’s privacy and data monitoring policies, it appears as though peace has been restored between the social media giant and Apple. [caption id=“attachment_5906211” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] FILE PHOTO: The logo of Facebook is pictured during the Viva Tech start-up and technology summit in Paris. Reuters[/caption] For the uninitiated, a VPN app called **'Facebook Research'** was being used by the Menlo Park-based company to get root access to iPhones of users aged between 13-35 years to monitor their mobile and internet activity, in exchange for $20 per month. In retaliation, Apple invalidated Facebook’s Enterprise Certificate as punishment which not only made the research app invalid but also deactivated other iOS apps by Facebook for workplace collaboration. Now after two days of hassle, which caused a lot of chaos among Facebook employees, the enterprise certificate has been restored. In a statement to TechCrunch, a Facebook spokesperson said “We have had our Enterprise Certification, which enables our internal employee applications, restored. We are in the process of getting our internal apps up and running. To be clear, this didn’t have an impact on our consumer-facing services.” Facebook is, however, not the only one that is snooping around user data by paying the user. Google had also been exposed by TechCrunch yesterday for doing the exact same thing in the name of ‘market research’ by using an app called Screenwise Meter. As of right now, Apple has also invalidated Google’s Enterprise Certificate which bans the internal iOS apps used by Google employees. Fortunately for Google, most of its employees are on Android which made the situation a bit more calm than the pandemonium at Menlo Park.