Facebook bans first data collection app since Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook has banned a new app over data privacy concerns as a part of an ongoing investigation it began following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

The company said in a statement on Thursday that they suspended the myPersonality quiz app because “it’s clear that they shared information with researchers as well as companies with only limited protections in place.”

Facebook said it notified the roughly 4 million people affected by the app, whose data may have been misused.

{mosads}The company also said in its post that since the start of its investigation in March, it has reviewed thousands of apps and suspended 400 of them over concerns about their data privacy practices.

MyPersonality was created by researchers at the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre to collect Facebook user data. It operated primarily between 2007 and 2012, when apps on Facebook were more popular.

David Stillwell, one of the app’s creators and a director at Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, defended the app and his firm’s work with it in a statement to TechCrunch.

“Facebook has long been aware of the application’s use of data for research,” Stillwell said. “In 2009 Facebook certified the app as compliant with their terms by making it one of their first ‘verified applications.’ In 2011 Facebook invited me to a meeting in Silicon Valley (and paid my travel expenses) for a workshop organised by Facebook precisely because it wanted more academics to use its data, and in 2015 Facebook invited Dr Kosinski to present our research at their headquarters.”

Facebook’s data privacy practices came under intense scrutiny earlier this year when The Guardian reported that Cambridge Analytica, a British research firm used by the Trump campaign, improperly obtained data from 87 million Facebook users, in part because of malpractice by Facebook.

Lawmakers hauled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Capitol Hill to testify on the matter, and publicly bashed him and his company.

Facebook has since rescinded the policies that let firms like Cambridge Analytica and Cambridge Psychometrics Centre from collecting large amounts of potentially sensitive data.