Facebook reported that on Monday it has removed around 200 apps on its platform as part of an investigation into misuse of private user data.
The investigation was initiated after revelations that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica leaked data on some 87 million Facebook users as it worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 US election campaign.
“The investigation process is in full swing,” said an online statement from Facebook product partnerships vice-president Ime Archibong.
“We have large teams of internal and external experts working hard to investigate these apps as quickly as possible. To date, thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended – pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data.”
Mr. Archibong added that “where we find evidence that these or other apps did misuse data, we will ban them and notify people via this website”.
A policy change of Facebook in 2014, limiting access to user data but noticed that some applications still had data obtained prior to the revision.
“There is a lot more work to be done to find all the apps that may have misused people’s Facebook data – and it will take time,” Mr. Archibong said.
Efforts to rebuild trustworthy in Facebook include a review of all applications that had access to large amounts of user data.
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“We suspended the myPersonality app almost a month ago because we believe that it may have violated Facebook’s policies,” Mr. Archibong said Monday in response to an AFP inquiry.
“We are currently investigating the app, and if myPersonality refuses to cooperate or fails our audit, we will ban it.”
About 40 percent of the people who took the tests also chose to share Facebook profile data, resulting in a large science research database, the University of Cambridge psychometrics centre said of the project on its website.
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