Facebook has announced that in the investigations of app developers following the Cambridge Analytica controversy, “tens of thousands” of apps had been suspended for a variety of reasons while it (FB) continued with the probe.
“It is important to understand that the apps that have been suspended are associated with about 400 developers. This is not necessarily an indication that these apps were posing a threat to people”, FB said on its official blog.
In a few cases, Facebook has banned the apps completely for one or many reasons, including inappropriately sharing data obtained from the social media giant or making data publicly available without protecting people’s identity.
FB goes on to reiterate that its investigation was not yet complete. It was in touch with regulators & policymakers, & was working with them on the investigation. Giving an example of the action taken so far, FB said one app it had banned was called myPersonality, which allegedly shared information with researchers & companies with only limited protections in place, & “then refused our request to participate in an audit.”
In some cases, FB had also initiated legal action. In May, it had filed a lawsuit in California against Rankwave, a South Korean data analytics company that failed to cooperate with the on-going investigation. On another issue, it had filed an action against LionMobi and JediMobi, two companies that used their apps to infect users’ phones with malware in a profit-generating scheme. This lawsuit, claims Facebook, is one of the 1st of its kind against this practice. In another case, it sued two Ukrainian men, Gleb Sluchevsky & Andrey Gorbachov, for allegedly using quiz apps to scrape users’ data off our platform.
FB has emphasized that the investigations into app developers was far from over.
Via: Facebook