Facebook has published an update on its investigation into “apps that had access to large amounts” of data that it announced back in March in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and after investigating thousands of apps, the company has announced that “around 200” apps have been suspended.
It’s not clear that any of those apps have actually
abused their access to Facebook user data, but Facebook has some
concerns and is suspending them from working “pending a thorough
investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data.” That
investigation will involve Facebook conducting interviews with
developers, requesting information about the app and the data it has
access to, along with audits “that may include on-site inspections.”
In the event that Facebook does discover that more apps
have abused access to this kind of user data, it will ban them
immediately, and notify users through this page,
which much like Cambridge Analytica will inform them if either they or
their friends allowed for their data to be compromised through the app.
As announced before, Facebook is focusing on apps from
2014 and earlier, when Facebook allowed apps to pull information not
only from the immediate user, but from their friends as well, even if
they hadn’t used the app themselves.
It’s good to see that Facebook is taking action here, but
these early results help illustrate how big the problem actually was
with the platform. Cambridge Analytica having access to millions of
user’s data was bad enough, but that there might be 200 other potential
companies that had similar access — even if it ends up that all 200 are
totally benign — for years isn’t an encouraging sign.
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