FACEBOOK SUSPENDS 200 APPS

WASHINGTON : Facebook suspends 200 apps over data misuse.

Faceboon said last Monday that it has suspended ''around  200'' apps on its platforms as part of an investigation into misuse of  private user data.

The investigation was launched after revelations that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica  hijacked data on some 87 million Facebook  users as it worked on  Donald Trump's  2016 campaign.

''The investigation is in full swing,'' said an online statement from Facebook product partnerships vice president  Ime Archibong.

''We have large teams of  internal and external experts working hard to investigate these apps as quickly as possible.

To date thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended   -pending a thorough investigation into whether that they did in fact misuse any data.''

Archibong added  that  ''where we find evidence that these or other apps did misuse data , we will ban them and notify people via this website.''

The revelations over Cambridge Analytica have prompted investigations on both sides of the Atlantic and led Facebook to tighten its policies on how personal data is shared and accessed.

Facebook made a policy change in 2014 limiting access to user data but noted that some application still had data it had obtained prior to the revision.

''There is a lot more work to be done to find all the apps that may have  misused people's data    -and it will take time,'' Archibong said. [AFP]