Facebook bans ‘Quiz Apps’ that capture data of four million users

Facebook said it banned the app, called myPersonality for failing to agree to our request to audit and because it is clear that they shared information with researchers as well as companies with only limited protections in place.

For More Latest News From Northeast India Click Here

Facebook's move comes almost five months after it initially suspended the myPersonality app. In May, Facebook was alerted to the fact that user data gathered by the myPersonality app could be accessed online relatively easily. The app hasn't been used much since 2012.

One of the researchers behind the app, David Stillwell, called the ban "nonsensical and purely for PR reasons." Mr. Stillwell said the findings from the myPersonality app were used to publish several social-science research papers in recent years and that he and his research partner were invited to Facebook's offices in 2011 and 2015 to discuss their work.

"It is, therefore, odd that Facebook should suddenly now profess itself to have been unaware of the myPersonality research and to believe that the data may have been misused," Mr. Stillwell said in a statement.

This is the second app after Cambridge Analytica's personality-prediction app, thisisyourdigitallife, to be banned by Facebook as part of a larger investigation, begun several months ago, into data abuse by outside developers. Banning an app is a more drastic change than suspension, which still allows for the possibility that the app can be reinstated.

 

So far, Facebook has suspended more than 400 apps as part of a broader investigation underway since March to piece together what happened to large chunks of user data and determine any level of abuse that needs to be disclosed to users and lawmakers. In May, Facebook said it suspended 200 apps.

The myPersonality app was initially suspended on April 7 as part of a separate investigation into an app called Cubeyou, a Facebook spokeswoman said. In May, Facebook was alerted to the fact that login credentials for the app, which was supposed to be available only to academics, could be easily found online. Facebook wasn't able to interview the researchers behind the app until after the company received approval from British officials. A spokeswoman declined to say when that permission was given.

Facebook's app investigation is a response to broader criticism over revelations earlier this year that data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed and retained user data obtained from Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Some 87 million people may have had their data exploited through that app, Facebook has said.

The app investigation faces many hurdles, including the fact that many developers are no longer in business and they aren't obligated to allow Facebook to audit their systems.

The myPersonality app was installed by roughly four million people and was "mainly active" before 2012, Facebook said. The company added that it had no evidence that myPersonality accessed records about its users' Facebook friends.