Facebook suspends around 200 apps in data misuse investigation
Facebook has suspended around 200 apps as part of its investigation into whether companies misused personal user data gathered from the social network. The company has evaluated thousands of apps to see if they had access to large amounts of data, and will now investigate those it has identified as potentially misusing that data, it said in a blog post on Monday.
Though Facebook suspects the roughly 200 apps of violating its policies by using Facebook data for purposes beyond app experience and functionality, the company told CBS News it will not release a list of those apps. The company said if its investigations confirm that apps misused data, users of those apps will be notified.
"Where we have concerns, we will conduct interviews, make requests for information (RFI) -- which ask a series of detailed questions about the app and the data it has access to -- and perform audits that may include on-site inspections," said Ime Archibong, Facebook's VP of product partnerships.
The investigation is part of Facebook's response to the revelations about Cambridge Analytica's collection of user data in March, after which the company was forced to admit it had allowed the data of tens of million of users to be mishandled. The company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised the investigation as one of a number of measures put in place to handle the scandal.
The investigation is ongoing and the number of apps that raise red flags could continue to rise. "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,"said Archibong.
CBS News investigative reporter Graham Kates contributed reporting for this story.