Facebook and Instagram: When the “META (GOAL)” is Spying

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The digital age promised connection, visibility and freedom of expression.

But in the midst of that promise lies an invisible, sophisticated and permanent surveillance system.

Instagram and Facebook, the jewels of the Meta empire, are no longer just platforms for social interaction: today they operate as personal data factories, training grounds for artificial intelligence algorithms, and showcases open to security vulnerabilities that compromise millions without many noticing.

Tell me what apps you have installed and I’ll tell you how secure your smartphone is

By: Gabriel E. Levy B.

Millions of people around the world choose iPhone devices for a reason that transcends fashion or design: security.

Apple has built a closed, controlled, and much more resilient ecosystem against digital threats compared to Android.

The iOS operating system is characterized by being less vulnerable to Trojans, malware, viruses, and other forms of intrusion, thanks to strict access controls, application revisions, and constant updates.

Privacy is, without a doubt, one of the strongest pillars of its architecture.

However, this advantage crumbles with a single gesture: install Facebook or Instagram on the device.

Both apps, owned by Meta, function as data black holes within a system that is otherwise very secure on its own.

The paradox is clear: Users spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an iPhone to protect their personal information, but willingly hand it over to two platforms that have been repeatedly questioned for intrusive surveillance, data mining, and misuse of information.

It doesn’t matter how sophisticated the device is, if the installed software takes care of dismantling all its privacy barriers.

As cybersecurity researcher Bart Jacobs points out, “security does not depend only on the system, but on the services we choose to use in it.”

Having an iPhone with Facebook and Instagram is like shielding the windows of a house and then leaving the front door open: the threat no longer enters by force, it enters by invitation.

Your smartphone is only as secure as the most insecure app you have installed

It doesn’t matter how many layers of encryption your device has, or how advanced the security technology that protects it: if you have a vulnerable app installed, your entire system is exposed.

This is the paradox that many users overlook.

You can have a state-of-the-art iPhone, with biometric sensors, end-to-end encryption, and restrictive access policies, but if you use Facebook or Instagram, your privacy no longer depends on Apple, but on Meta.

Both applications have been pointed out by multiple cybersecurity agencies as hotspots for data leaks, massive collection of personal information and, in some cases, direct entry for digital espionage.

A study by the CyberPeace Institute summed it up with brutal clarity

“The strength of the device does not compensate for the weakness of the software that inhabits it.”  CyberPeace Institute

Thus, your smartphone can be an armored vault, but if you leave the door open with an app that records your location, your interests, your consumption habits, your photos and your relationships, all the security becomes an illusion.

“In the digital world, there is no padlock that protects if the spy is inside.” CyberPeace Institute

It is not an accidental matter

In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal set off the first alarm bells. Meta (then still called Facebook Inc.) became the symbol of a digital economy built on the mass extraction of personal data.

Since then, the questioning has not ceased.

However, 2025 marked a turning point.

The  2025 Social Media Privacy Ranking, prepared by the international organization Privacy Not Included, the most reliable and rigorous in the world, placed Instagram and Facebook in last place.

The criteria evaluated included clarity of terms of use, ease of disabling trackers, and compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Meta obtained the worst scores in all indicators and we are not talking about subtle differences,  it is the worst in everything, showing that the protection of data and information is not part of its real policy.

The gateway to espionage on smartphones

Facebook and Instagram have become veritable gateways for corporate and political espionage on a global scale.

Various very rigorous and reliable investigations, with data and evidence, such as the report published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the studies of the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto, have documented how these platforms are exploited by malicious actors, both state and private, to infiltrate devices and extract strategic information.

In corporate environments, competing companies use Meta’s products as a first choice, to infiltrate executives, install spyware or intercept key communications.

These platforms allow tracking movements, routines, relationships and even the personal preferences of managers, which can facilitate industrial espionage campaigns.

During electoral processes, the situation intensifies.

Hackers hired by parties or governments use these applications to collect sensitive information about political opponents, manipulate audiences or even spread disinformation with surgical precision.

According to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab:

 Facebook and Instagram are the most used channel, in 97% of cases, for covert digital interception operations in recent elections in Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and the United States.

According to reports from the same Israeli company NSO Group, its own platforms such as Pegasus, used by government agencies, manage to penetrate the security of iPhones thanks to the vulnerabilities of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.

 In other words, if it weren’t for Meta’s apps, breaching the security of an iPhone would be practically impossible for software like Pegasus.

 These apps, once installed, not only expose the user, but turn their device into a walking microphone.

In this context, social networks not only communicate: they also spy.

Ethics are not part of Meta’s DNA

As if the above were not worrying, Mark Zuckerberg‘s company decided to implement a radical policy: use Instagram’s user-generated content to feed its artificial intelligence system, Meta AI, with a change in the personal data policy, which all its users accepted without realizing it.

This measure, which came into force on May 27, 2025, allows Meta to access photos, videos, comments, stories and interactions, without the need to ask for explicit consent and what is worse, allows Meta to share it with third parties.

Those who do not actively oppose are automatically included.

The retroactive nature of this practice means that pre-objection data is also used.

“Legitimate interest”: a clause as diffuse as it is dangerous

Meta justifies the measure with a legal expression: “legitimate interest”.

This figure allows companies to process personal data without explicit consent, provided that a benefit greater than the risk for the user is argued. However, this interpretation has been widely questioned by European jurists.

Professor Paul Bernal, a specialist in digital law at the University of East Anglia, argues that “the problem is not only legal, but ethical”.

“When a company with the power of Meta uses fuzzy legal clauses to exploit its users’ data, it becomes an actor that overcomes democratic control.”

Paul Bernal

The situation is aggravated by considering that the opposition mechanism implemented by Instagram is opaque, cumbersome and deliberately complex.

Many users are unaware of its existence, or do not know how to exercise their right to object.

The result is predictable: most end up accepting, unknowingly, to be part of Meta’s artificial intelligence training lab.

In parallel, the report reveals that the company globally leads in fines for privacy violations in Europe and the world. In addition, it collects sensitive categories such as health data, location, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, under the guise of personalizing the user experience.

The Espionage Paradise

By sharing all user data with AI training systems, an invisible but critical line is crossed: absolute exposure.

What was previously contained in an app under minimum security protocols, now becomes part of huge opaque databases that feed AI models without real guarantees of protection.

These systems are not designed to protect privacy, but to absorb and process massive information at full speed.

They do not use extreme encryption, robust anonymization systems, or transparent auditing mechanisms.

As a result, every conversation, image, comment, or interaction used to train Meta’s AI is brutally exposed.

The risk is immense: once the data is integrated into the model, there is no longer a way to retire it or control how it will be used.

They are there, at the mercy of leaks, improper access or internal manipulations. And if a malicious actor gains access to the training system, they don’t just get isolated data: they access patterns, behaviors, personal bonds, emotional interests, and entire psychological profiles.

That is, everything that makes a person vulnerable.

This is the new frontier of digital espionage, and no one is watching it.

“It wasn’t a hack, it was an exposure”: the 2025 leaks

In May 2025, a data breach was reported that affected more than 35 million Instagram users.

 Although Meta downplayed the fact, stating that it was an “accidental exposure of credentials”, cybersecurity experts, such as Bruce Schneier, author of Data and Goliath, warn that the vulnerabilities are embedded in the very design of the company’s digital ecosystem.

Just a month later, in June, a second leak occurred that compromised data from multiple social networks, including Whats App, Facebook and Instagram.

This time, the exposed data included emails, encrypted passwords, and interaction logs.

The global cybersecurity community reacted with concern.

Meta, on the other hand, issued a brief statement and avoided answering questions from the press.

For researcher Bruce Schneier, author of Data and Goliath,

“These leaks are not isolated technical failures. They are consequences of an economic model that rewards the accumulation of data at any cost.” Bruce Schneier

One of the most disturbing aspects of these exhibitions is the way they affect ordinary users: students, artists, workers, teenagers, businessmen and politicians.

People who have not voluntarily given up their information, but who are dragged down by unintelligible policies and platforms without clear options to protect themselves.

In addition, on networks such as Instagram, the culture of public exposure is intertwined with the logic of surveillance.

Visual content is transformed into an input for algorithmic training without creators knowing it.

Minors are the most exposed

In France, the NGO La Quadrature du Net documented in June more than 500 cases of minors whose data was indexed by third-party systems through public tags on Instagram.

Although Meta claims not to use data from minors, the permissive design of its platform allows it to be collected by other applications connected to the ecosystem.

In Germany, digital activist Malte Spitz alleged that the data he voluntarily posted on Instagram about his travels was used by a marketing agency that bought access to Meta’s public APIs.

The agency managed to create a consumer profile adjusted to their movements, tastes and nighttime habits.

These cases show the same logic: users not only publish, but unknowingly deliver fuel to a machine that optimizes benefits for third parties. The network is not a public square, it is a sophisticated extractive system, which opens the door to espionage.

Meta doesn’t deny it, it just avoids talking about it

In the face of growing questions about privacy violations, espionage and misuse of data, Facebook, now Meta, does not openly deny the facts.

Rather, their strategy is to minimize them, dilute their seriousness without offering hard evidence, and avoid responding clearly to the media or regulatory bodies.

In many cases, he opts for a well-known maneuver: diverting attention with bombastic advertisements and spectacular launches. This was the case in October 2021, when one of the most compromising scandals for the company broke out: the Facebook Papers.

This leak, delivered by former employee Frances Haugen to the U.S. Congress and international media such as The Washington Post and The Guardian, revealed more than 10,000 internal documents that showed that Facebook had full knowledge of the damage caused by its platforms, both in terms of adolescent mental health and in the proliferation of hate speech and political misinformation and intentional failures in their security.  and decided not to act so as not to affect its profitability.

The company’s response was not an accountability, but the announcement, the same month, of the creation of the “Metaverse”, a futuristic technological promise presented by Mark Zuckerberg as the new digital horizon.

The scandal was buried under the smoke of the show.

This tactic of “distracting with promises of innovation while ignoring structural problems” remains a constant. Meta doesn’t respond: it reconfigures the conversation.

The corporate prevention strategy

Globally, companies with a culture rooted in cybersecurity, especially within the financial sector, are taking drastic measures to protect their most sensitive assets: information.

An emblematic case is that of the British bank NatWest Group, which has banned its senior executives from having Meta applications, such as Facebook and Instagram, installed on their corporate devices. The same is done  by CityBank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase and BBVA with the employees responsible for sensitive issues.

The reason is clear: these platforms represent a critical security risk, as they constantly access data, contacts, locations, and usage patterns that could put the bank’s security at risk.

These types of decisions are not isolated. Technology companies specializing in cybersecurity, such as Symantec or Kaspersky, have also adopted similar restrictive policies.

Both companies give their employees exclusive mobile phones for work use, on which it is expressly forbidden to install any Meta product, including WhatsApp, which, despite offering end-to-end encryption, has been flagged for vulnerabilities exploited in the past.

In the case of employees who wish to use social networks such as Instagram or Facebook, these companies require that they do so from devices completely separate from the work environment, intended only for personal or recreational purposes.

This practice is based on a key premise: any smartphone connected to a corporate network can be a gateway for attacks, especially if it contains META applications that constantly collect and transfer data.

The strict segmentation between personal and professional life is not a paranoid exaggeration, but a realistic response to the digital surveillance ecosystem in which Meta’s platforms operate.

Companies that understand this risk have chosen not to expose a single piece of critical data to applications whose operating logic is based precisely on collecting, cross-referencing and monetizing private information.

In conclusion, the daily use of applications such as Facebook and Instagram, deeply integrated into contemporary digital life, is no longer a trivial or merely social issue.

What many people consider to be tools of connection or entertainment, has morphed into structured mechanisms of data mining and surveillance, not only by private companies like Meta, but also by spies and organizations with dark purposes.

Recent changes in privacy policies, the use of content for AI training, multiple data breaches, and documented technical vulnerabilities have shown that these platforms pose real risks, especially for those who handle strategic information.

The fact that financial institutions and cybersecurity companies prohibit their use in work environments should be a warning sign for all users.

In a world where spying no longer requires undercover agents or hidden microphones, but only an installed application, the real protection is not only in the device, but in the decisions we make about what we let in or out.

References

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