Facebook belatedly suspends 'tens of thousands' of apps in privacy probe following Cambridge Analytica affair

Facebook has filed lawsuits against a number of app developers over data expropriation

Facebook has suspended tens of thousands of apps as part of its ongoing investigation that was started last year in response to Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The company said on Friday that the suspended apps were created by approximately 400 developers, but the suspension doesn ' t necessarily suggest that they were posing a threat to users.

"Many were not live but were still in their testing phase when we suspended them," Ime Archibong, vice president of product partnerships at Facebook said in blog post.

Many were not live but were still in their testing phase when we suspended them

An app called myPersonality was found to be sharing user data with several companies and researchers, and refused to participate in a review when Facebook contacted the company as part of its probe.

The company said it has also filed lawsuits in some specific cases. For example, it has sued South Korean firm RankWave for declining to participate in an assessment.

Similarly, JediMobi and LionMobi were sued for committing ad fraud, while two Ukrainian men, Andrey Gorbachov and Gleb Sluchevsky, were found to be running quiz apps that surreptitiously stole user data.

Besides suspending apps from its platform, Facebook also said that it had removed several APIs that gave developers access to a variety of data from users.

Facebook started an investigation into apps that use its platform following the March 2018 revelations that British firm Cambridge Analytica had illegally collected data from millions of Facebook users, and used that data in political campaigns.

The disclosure led to backlash against the company - although hasn't affected it financially, or led to a decline in user numbers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also called to testify before Congress.

In July, the company agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a record $5 billion fine over privacy violations stemming from the Cambridge Analytica row. The company was alleged to have violated a 2012 agreement with the FTC by allowing the inappropriate sharing data of 87 million users' data with Cambridge Analytica.

The FTC has now imposed a number of new restrictions on Facebook's business operation.

As per Facebook's agreement with the FTC, app developers will need to get an annual certificate from the company to verify that they abide by Facebook's policies. Those that are found to be breaking the rules the company has laid down can be held accountable for abusing the social networking platform.