Data Misuse Audit: Facebook now Suspending Apps!

Facebook has revealed that it has suspended applications in the region of 200  as part of an ongoing audit to weed out third-party apps that may have misused Facebook users’ data.

CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on March 21st that the company would be taking new measures to allay fears of any additional historical privacy violations in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

He said that all applications  that were given access to data before Facebook changed its policy in 2015, as well as those that demonstrate “suspicious behaviour,” would be audited.

Facebook now says that since the audit began nearly two months ago it has investigated “thousands of apps,” of which “around 200” have been suspended.

Ongoing process 

“The investigation process is in full swing, and it has two phases,” noted Ime Archibong, VP of product partnerships at Facebook.

The First phase is a comprehensive review to identify every application  that had access to this amount of Facebook data and the second phase where there may be concerns, Interviews will be carried out to make requests for information (RFI) which ask a series of detailed questions about the application and the data it has access to. They will also perform audits that may include on-site inspections

Facebook had also blocked new apps from joining the platform after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal came to light, but the company reopened its app review process earlier this month at its annual F8 developers conference.

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