In order to curtail the abuse or misuse of data, Facebook has launched a reward programme.
Tagged Data Abuse Bounty, it is meant to reward those who report data misuse by app developers.
According to a release from Red Media Africa, the bounty programme is part of Facebook’s effort to uncover potential abuse of people’s information.
It is inspired by the existing bug bounty programme which Facebook uses to uncover and address security issues and is expected to help the company identify violators of its policies.
The release quoted Collin Greene, head of Product Security of Facebook as saying that the company would “review all legitimate reports and respond as quickly as possible when we identify a credible threat to people’s information.”
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“If we confirm data abuse, we will shut down the offending app and take legal action against the company selling or buying the data, if necessary.
“We’ll pay the person who reported the issue and we’ll also alert those we believe to be affected,” Greene added.
The release disclosed that the programme would reward people with first hand knowledge and proof of cases where a Facebook platform app collects or transfers people’s data to another party to be sold, stolen or used for scams or political influence.
Facebook has been under criticism following revelations of data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm based in the UK.
