Facebook announced that they suspended “tens of thousands” of apps associated with 400 developers due to the privacy concern, and pose a threat to the Facebook community.
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal that affected 87 Million Facebook Users, Facebook continuously focusing more and deploy the in-depth investigation to figure out the vulnerable apps.
Facebook started the investigation based on the accessibility permission that requested by the apps from Facebook users, which means “how many users they had and how much data they could access “
Later Facebook starts identifying the apps that abuse the privacy policy based on the signals associated with an app’s potential and perform the in-depth examination.
To date, the investigation has applied with millions of apps and suspended more than 10k apps for a variety of reason, and the app developers team employed by Facebook continuing their investigation.
Not All suspended App Posing threats
Facebook suspended many apps not just because of abusing the user’s privacy but many of the app that opt-in the facebook API not live, and so many test apps are never get rolled out.
“We have clarified that we can suspend or revoke a developer’s access to any API that it has not used in the past 90 days”, Facebook said.
Also, many of the app developers are not responding to a Facebook request which causes them to suspended according to Facebook’s commitment to take action.
According to Ime Archibong, VP of Product Partnerships at Facebook ” In a few cases, we have banned apps completely. That can happen for any number of reasons including inappropriately sharing data obtained from us, making data publicly available without protecting people’s identity or something else that was in clear violation of our policies. “
In the same case, an App called myPersonality banned in last year shared the information about 3 Million Facebook Users Highly Sensitive Data with researchers and companies.
“Also, Facebook filed a lawsuit against Rankwave, a South Korean data analytics company that failed to cooperate with Facebook investigation an LionMobi and JediMobi, two companies that used their apps to infect users’ phones with malware in a profit-generating scheme.”
Likewise, To improve users privacy, Facebook continually working to set up a strong foundation by removing several APIs, and carefully review every active app whether its access to more than basic user information.
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