At least 18 percent of underage users reported for controversial Facebook application

A total of 18 percent of the participants of the controversial Facebook app that the company used to monitor the entire network traffic of participants were underage, reports TechCrunch. Previously, Facebook incorrectly emphasized that it was 5 percent.

In January it became known that the social medium with the app Facebook Research mapped the network traffic of users and paid them for it. The research focused on people between 13 and 35 years.

In the first instance, Facebook emphasized that 5 percent of the participants were teenagers. Now it appears that this percentage is the number of users at the time that Facebook came into the news with the app, instead of during the entire use of the app.

“When we discontinued the Facebook Research app on Apple’s iOS operating system, less than 5 percent of people sharing data with us were teenagers,” the company said to a US senator. “An analysis shows that that number is about 18 percent when you look at the complete duration of the program and also add people who have become inactive and have removed the app.”

With the Facebook Research app, the company also violated a business deal with Apple because the app was made available through an Apple function that should not have been used by consumers. Google was similarly abusing the Apple program for this kind of apps.