The data of about 4 million Facebook users may have been misused by a third party app, the company announced in a post Tuesday.
The social site has banned the app, myPersonality, and says it will be informing those people who chose to share their profile. Facebook says they “currently have no evidence” that myPersonality obtained data from friends of those 4 million users, but added that they will contact everyone affected if that is the case.
Facebook says myPersonality was “mainly active prior to 2012,” and not only failed to agree to a request to audit, but “it’s clear that they shared information with researchers as well as companies with only limited protections in place.”
“Since launching our investigation in March, we have investigated thousands of apps,” VP of Product Partnerships Ime Archibong wrote in the release. “We have suspended more than 400 due to concerns around the developers who built them or how the information people chose to share with the app may have been used — which we are now investigating in much greater depth.”
The investigation came four months after Facebook suspended the political data mining firm Cambridge Analytica amid allegations that it gathered data on tens of millions of users via a third party app called “thisisyourdigitallife.” The now-defunct company worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
CNN contributed to this report.
