Facebook announced in a blog post last month that Facebook is offering rewards on reports of data abuse by developers of Facebook apps. This rewards program, which Facebook is calling Data Abuse Bounty, launched today.
Facebook says the rewards will be valued on a case-by-case basis “based on the impact of each report.” This 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,” Facebook says in a blog post.
The post says that there’s no ceiling or established scale as to the value of payouts for the program, but points out that “high impact bug reports” have been rewarded with up to $40,000. Users can go to facebook.com/data-abuse to file reports.
The Data Abuse Bounty program is one of a number of steps Facebook has taken in recent weeks to address its handling of user data and privacy. It announced plans to allow users to delete their messaging history and changes to its policies regarding political ads.
Facebook announced a new initiative to help understand the role social media plays in elections and society on the whole. A new initiative will see Facebook collaborate with academics to study Facebook’s impact on upcoming elections. Facebook says it won’t have the right to review or refuse to publish the findings of the researchers.