Facebook on Wednesday said that app developers continued to have access to data of inactive users even after the 90-day cutoff. The social media giant gave assurances that the issue had been fixed, but the blunder allowed approximately 5,000 third parties to continue receiving user data for a longer period than agreed.
Facebook promised in 2018 that developers would no longer have access to user data if the person had not used the developer's app for 90 days. Many sites and apps allow the use of Facebook accounts to log in, and this, in turn, provides developers with information on a user's email, date of birth, hometown, and list of friends.
But in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal two years ago, Facebook limited access to app developers, provided that a user has not used the app for more than 90 days. UK political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested data from up to 87 million users without their permission, sparking concerns that Facebook wasn't doing enough to safeguard user privacy.
The New York Times and several UK publications broke news that Facebook was being duped by Cambridge Analytica, who had taken advantage of the security flaw and reportedly misused data for political ads during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
According to Facebook, it only recently found out that developers continued to receive data from the company even after the cut-off.
"For example, this could happen if someone used a fitness app to invite their friends from their hometown to a workout, but we didn't recognize that some of their friends had been inactive for many months," Facebook said in a blog post.
Facebook, with more than 2.5 billion monthly active users, did not disclose in the post how many of these users were affected or if they had been notified. The company promised it would continue with its investigation, but as of the moment, it has not found evidence of any misuse of data.
To know which apps have been linked on your Facebook account, simply tap the settings menu and click on "Apps and websites." Apps no longer used for more than 90 days may still have access to the info you shared upon signing up on the app, but it can no longer make requests for any additional private information.
After the news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out, Facebook was fined by the Federal Trade Commission with a whopping $5 billion.
