Facebook is now offering a $40,000 bounty for user-data abuse

Facebook said today it will roll out a new program called the Data Abuse Bounty, which will reward people who report any misuse of data by app developers. Bounty hunters worked so well for Jabba the Hutt, after all.

If you’re looking to collect a bounty, you’ll need “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 reviews all legitimate reports, and if it finds some nasty data abusers in the mix, it will shut them down, take legal action, alert those affected by the breach, and pay the person who reported the issue.

The exact amount will be determined by the impact. The bounties start at $500, according to a report by CNBC, and while there is no maximum, Facebook’s announcement mentioned that “high impact” tips could pay out as much as $40,000.

This isn’t the first bounty that Facebook has implemented. The Data Abuse Bounty was inspired by the existing bug bounty program that the social network uses to ward off hackers and address security issues.

The news comes in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and may have been timed to make Mark Zuckerberg’s week in front of Congress a wee bit easier.