Social networking giant Facebook has renamed its controversial Internet.org app as Free Basics by Facebook.
The company says it's making the change "to better distinguish the Internet.org initiative from the programmes and services we're providing, including Free Basics."
The app and website are available in 19 countries and enable access to select "basic services" such as Wikipedia, health and employment information free of data charges.
Internet.org, first announced in August 2013, is designed to provide free Internet access to basic websites in developing countries, in partnership with carriers.
While the project was initially widely applauded, it come under criticism over the amount of private data it collects from users and over the process by which news publishers were selected to be included in the app.
In May, Facebook opened the Internet.org platform to new Web sites, so that no publishers were excluded, and applications from developers - a move the company said would boost efforts to get people online in low-income and rural areas in emerging markets. Since then, Free Basics has added 60 services, and the platform is open to all developers.
In June this year, Cell C and Facebook partnered to bring free Internet access to consumers through the launch of Internet.org in SA.
According to a blog post published yesterday, Internet.org will enhance security and privacy of Free Basics by encrypting information wherever possible.
"Several months ago we announced support for services using HTTPS in the Free Basics Android app, and today, we're adding support for HTTPS services on the Web version as well. And even if the service you access only runs over HTTP, we encrypt that information between our servers and any device that supports HTTPS," Internet.org says in a statement.
Developer interested in submitting a service to be part of the platform can learn more here.
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