Facebook blocked tens of thousands of apps following Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook said on Friday that it has temporarily banned tens of thousands of apps for a variety of reasons. This action is part of the company’s investigation last year against a major data privacy scandal. In March 2018, Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy, collected data on as many as 87 million Facebook users without permission.

Subsequently, Facebook began investigating developers who have access to user data. The company said that many applications that were temporarily banned (these applications came from 400 application developers) are still being tested, and these applications are not available.

“This is not necessarily an indication that these apps were posing a threat to people,” Ime Archibong, Facebook’s vice president of product partnerships, said in a blog post. Some applications were temporarily banned because the developer did not respond to Facebook’s request for more information. And other applications were completely banned because they improperly shared user data or violated Facebook’s rules.

“We have not confirmed other instances of misuse to date other than those we have already notified the public about, but our investigation is not yet complete,” Archibong said. Facebook does not provide a list of temporarily banned apps.

Via: CNET