Facebook revealed a new privacy incident on its platform yesterday . Specifically, Facebook said that 5,000 app developers continued to have access to user data, even after users stopped using their apps. The incident is related to a security check that Facebook added to its systems after the “Cambridge Analytica” scandal that took place in early 2018.
After the tech giant faced intense criticism for allowing app developers to access user information for longer than they should, Facebook added a new mechanism to its API that prevented an app from accessing user data if the user had been using it for more than 90 days. However, this security mechanism was not activated in some cases, allowing some apps to continue to access user information even after the 90-day period had expired.
Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s vice president of partnerships, said the company’s engineers fixed the issue the same day they discovered it. He also said the company analyzed internal logs to determine the scope of the breach of data on the platform. Specifically, he pointed out that from the data available to the company over the past few months, it is estimated that the issue that arose allowed about 5,000 app developers to continue receiving user information. However, the company did not specify exactly how many users were affected and provided their data to app developers, even after they stopped using their app.
Facebook stressed that its systems did not extract more user data than users initially allowed it to access, meaning that if users did not change their profile information, the apps already had their data. In addition to revealing a new privacy breach, Facebook also announced new terms and policies for developer . According to Papamiltiadis, the new terms limit the information app developers can share with third parties without the explicit consent of Facebook users, and also ensure that app developers understand that they have a responsibility to protect user data if they use Facebook’s platform and user base to build their own business.
More generally, in recent months Facebook has filed many lawsuits against app developers who abused its platform, while the new terms and policies will prevent app developers from attempting to violate the company's rules again.
