Facebook Suspends 200 Apps Pending Investigation Into Data Breaches After Cambridge Analytica Scandal

The Cambridge Analytica data scandal brought about months of scandals and internal reforms for social media giant Facebook. On Monday, Facebook announced in a blog post that it had taken preliminary punitive measures against hundreds of apps that may have misused user data like Cambridge Analytica.

In the blog post, VP of Product Partnerships Ime Archibong gave an update on Facebook’s investigation into apps that had access to user data prior to rule changes in 2014 reduced that access. As of Monday, Facebook had looked into thousands of apps and suspended 200, “pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data.”

Any app that fails Facebook’s audit process will be banned from the site and users will be able to see if they or their friends installed the app from a special website. The blog post also gave a somewhat detailed explanation of how the investigation process for each app will work.

“First, a comprehensive review to identify every app that had access to this amount of Facebook data. And second, 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.”

None of the suspended apps were identified. As CNN explained, the goal is to crack down on any kind of egregious data breach like that of election consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Some Facebook users took a personality test within an app on the site that harvested data about them, which Cambridge Analytica then allegedly used during President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Facebook asked the firm to delete the data in 2015, but it did not comply. Cambridge Analytica went out of business in early May.

The PR firestorm that came in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica prompted Facebook to make some changes. New features were added to theoretically increase transparency about data use, and even though there was a campaign for users to delete Facebook, the company reported strong financials for the last quarter.

Facebook promised its upcoming dating service would not use user data to serve ads to people using it last week.