Facebook has been conducting an audit of apps available on its site and has suspended 200 apps for possibly misusing data. Although the apps identified have not been named yet, Facebook says it will contact users that may have been affected by the misuse of personal data.
Personality test data
Meanwhile, an investigation conducted by New Scientist has found that that the personal and sensitive data of Facebook users was stored and shared inadequately by academics at the University of Cambridge.
Millions of Facebook users completed the myPersonality app and approximately three million of them agreed to share their data “in an anonymous manner”.
However, gaining access to the data illicitly was relatively easy – a simple online search surfaced a working email/password for the data that had been made available on GitHub. Users could then access the personality scores of 3.1 million users along with 22 million status updates and other information.
Sources: Futurism; Endgadget; New Scientist.