This week, new documents were revealed in a class-action lawsuit against Facebook that allege the company “built the largest real-time surveillance system in existence” by using VPN technology to gather user data.

The suit, filed in 2020, has to do with the Facebook-owned VPN Onavo. According to the claim, Facebook used the technology to gather user data from third-party apps, then cross-referenced it with the company’s own data. In effect, the company could theoretically use this to build complete profiles of its users’ online lives.

“Not only could Facebook determine how much time users spent on their own apps, but it could determine what users were doing on other apps, including the media sent through other apps. In some cases Facebook could spy on the content of messages sent or media sent or received on a user’s device,” the suit says.

This information is being presented in the suit to prove that Facebook has an unfair market advantage over its competitors. However, it’s also a damaging revelation that could hurt Facebook’s already-low trust levels with the public. A Facebook-owned VPN was always a bad idea, but if this suit is to be believed, it may have been even worse than originally thought.

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