Facebook said it had suspended roughly 200 apps as part of its investigation into the potential misuse of personal data on the social network, the latest fallout from the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
In an announcement on Monday, the company also said that it had investigated thousands of apps two months after reporting by the Observer and the Guardian revealed that millions of Americans’ personal data was harvested from Facebook and improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy.
Ime Archibong, Facebook’s vice-president of product partnerships, said in a blogpost that the company was conducting a “comprehensive review” to identify every app that had access to large amounts of data before the site changed its policies in 2014. When concerns arise, Facebook plans to conduct interviews, request information from the apps “and perform audits that may include on-site inspections”, Archibong wrote.
“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. We are investing heavily to make sure this investigation is as thorough and timely as possible.”
If Facebook discovers that an app misused data, the company said it would ban them and allow users to check whether they were affected through a dedicated webpage.
A spokesperson also confirmed to the Guardian that Facebook had suspended myPersonality, a Facebook quiz application that launched in 2007.
Two Cambridge researchers, Dr Michal Kosinski and Dr David Stillwell, had pioneered psychometric research using Facebook data with that application. The myPersonality database served as the inspiration for the app built by Aleksandr Kogan, which is at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook suspended myPersonality on 7 April after discovering that the app may have violated policies, the spokesperson said, adding that the app would be permanently banned if the investigation uncovered evidence of misused data or if the people behind the app refused to cooperate.
The announcement marks a small step in its internal reviews as the company continues to reel from the investigations into Cambridge Analytica, which announced earlier this month that it was shutting down. Despite the closure, Facebook will still face intense scrutiny over how third parties have accessed and used people’s data to try and influence elections in the US and the UK.
Mark Zuckerberg faced a two-day grilling by Congress last month, deflecting some of lawmakers’ toughest questions about how the company collects people’s data.
Amid a viral #DeleteFacebook campaign, the CEO unveiled a new Facebook privacy control this month called “clear history” that he said would allow users to erase their browsing information from the site. Zuckerberg also admitted that he “didn’t have clear enough answers to some of the questions about data” when questioned by lawmakers.