Facebook Inc has so far suspended around 200 apps in the first stage of its review into apps that had access to large quantities of user data, as the service continues to grapple with the fallout from a scandal around political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
The company has evaluated thousands of apps to see if they had access to large amounts of data, and will now thoroughly investigate those it has identified as potentially misusing that data, it said in a blog post on Monday.
"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," said Ime Archibong, Facebook's vice president of product partnerships.
The apps were suspended pending a thorough investigation into whether they misused any data, said Ime Archibong, Facebook’s vice president of product partnerships.
The suspensions are part of an app investigation and audit that Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg promised on March 21. Any app that either refused or failed an audit would be banned from Facebook, the post said.
Zuckerberg had said the social network will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before the company curtailed data access in 2014.
“There is a lot more work to be done to find all the apps that may have misused people’s Facebook data – and it will take time,” Archibong said.
“We have large teams of internal and external experts working hard to investigate these apps as quickly as possible.”
Facebook was hit by the privacy scandal in mid-March after media reports that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to build profiles on American voters and influence the 2016 presidential election.
The incident led to a backlash from celebrities and resulted in the company losing billions in market value. Zuckerberg apologized for the mistakes his company made and testified before the US lawmakers.
The company, however, regained much of its lost market value after it reported a surprisingly strong 63 percent rise in profit and an increase in users when it announced quarterly results on April 25.
Shares of the company were up 0.4 percent at $187.65 in premarket trading on Monday.
