Facebook has finally taken hold of flaws in its privacy. The company is now taking strict actions to get rid of apps present on the platform that may abuse user privacy. This tech giant gave a detailed explanation of its activities in a Blogpost on Friday 20h September, where it reports that it has by now addressed millions of apps. Amongst them, ten thousand have been suspended already. Moreover, it communicates describing its abut 400 developers as bad actors within th company.
These strict actions that Facebook is taking have also made it to the headlines, such as the lawsuit filed against the South Korean data analytic company Rankwave that ran apps on Facebook. Apart from that, the strict actions Facebook took in August for click injection fraud, against two Asian developers.
Defrauding of LionMobi of Hog Kong and JediMobi of Singapore also made it to the limelight. These quite popular applications had 200 million Google Play Store downloads but were, however, defrauded by Facebook due to displaying their ads on user devices.
Cleaning of Apps is now high on priority for Facebook, especially after the Cambridge Analytica incident, which occurred through a viral data collection app. The app later was identified to be an active data stealer.
Facebook has further explained the reason behind these data hoarding apps hat had resided on the platform, which is due to the previous investigation method. It elaborated how it used to traditionally investigate into apps on criteria based on how many users it had and how much data it could have access to. It also explains how these policies of investigation have changed. They told that now they have a system of check apps through “signals associated with an apps potential o abuse our policies”. These abuse policies are automated to trigger a more in-depth investigation. Any signs of suspicion could lead to app facing legal actions or bans depending upon the extent of doubt.
The VP of products Ime Archibong reports upon query
“Our App Developer Investigation is by no means finished. But there is meaningful progress to report.”
He further informed that the progress of the reports also included apps like myPersonality, which was app facebook banned for
“sharing information with researchers and companies with only limited protections in place.” Moreover, the apps developers “refused our request to participate in an audit.”
Upon inquiry of the actions, Facebook has further referenced the recent agreement the social media giant drew with U.S. FTC. With it, the company had described there to be ” a fundamental shift in the way we approach our work—marking a sharper turn toward privacy, on a different scale than anything we’ve done in the past.” It has also claimed to root out any fraudulent apps that may in any way harm user privacy.
Highlighting the developers facebook claims that th developers are still viral. However, they must understand that facebook is taking action to protect their privacy merely. The same day the CEO of the company was again pressured by the US lawmakers to appear on the news. They demanded to take more measure to protect user privacy of 2 billion users worldwide.
“Our goal is to bring problems to light so we can address them quickly, stay ahead of bad actors and make sure that people can continue to enjoy engaging social experiences on Facebook while knowing their data will remain safe.”
Now Facebook is a social media giant; the real problem it has to face is taking care of thee fraudulent apps. This is more so as the lawmakers claim facebook to be the villain itself, considering the company has a vast number of apps monitoring user information. If this information gets further abused, facebook may face graver issues.
