Well, that was fast! Facebook on Monday revealed that as many as 200 Facebook apps may have misused your data just like Cambridge Analytica. Following the Cambridge Analytica revelations, Mark Zuckerberg promised that Facebook would perform an internal audit to see whether any developers violated the privacy of Facebook users in a similar manner. That promise was made on March 21st, and nearly two months later Facebook has has revealed that the are almost certainly many other apps that misuse private data, which surprises nobody.
“Large teams of internal and external experts [are] working hard” to investigate the apps that had access to large amounts of user data before Facebook changed its policies in 2014, the company said. To date, thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended, although that doesn’t mean anything for the time being. An investigation is still needed to see exactly what happened with each of the apps.
Back in March, the world learned that Cambridge Analytica was able to access data from up to 87 million users — the number is the latest estimate provided by Zuckerberg — and use that data to target certain groups of people during the US presidential election. Since then, Facebook set up a website that tells you whether your profile data was collected by Cambridge Analytica. In the future, the portal will be updated with information for other apps that could be found guilty of the same charges.
Facebook’s announcement is rather short and it lacks concrete details, but the company still deemed it necessary to publish it on Monday. Why? We’ll have to wait and see.
