Facebook suspends thousands of apps over data privacy concerns

Social media giants Facebook has revealed that it has suspended tens of thousands of apps from the platform because of privacy reasons.

Facebook did not give a specific number of suspended apps but merely said in a blog post that the apps were built by 400 developers.

The company said that it has also looked into millions more and the investigation is ongoing.

“Our App Developer Investigation is by no means finished. But there is meaningful progress to report so far,” Ime Archibong, VP of Product Partnerships at Facebook wrote in the blog post. “To date, this investigation has addressed millions of apps.”

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The apps were reportedly banned for several reasons, such as collecting Facebook user profile data, making the data public without protecting the users’ identities, and other violations of the company policies.

Facebook, for instance, banned the app MyPersonality, which refused to comply with the company’s audit and allegedly shared information with third particles sans proper protections in place.

Archibong said that the action does not necessarily mean that the apps were posing a threat to people. Some were still in the testing phase when they were suspended, while in other cases, the developers did not respond to the company’s request for information.

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