In April last year, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook had changed some of its rules for sharing data with third parties. Among the APIs, there was also one in relation to Groups, that allows application developers to access some information.
While previously the data obtained matched the activity on the group with the name and profile photo of the user. Now you can only have data such as the name of the group. Alongside the number of users and content of posts. Unless the user does not agree to disclose other information.
Well, the changes do not seem to have been applied to all the APIs. Given that some applications had maintained the type of privileged access typical of the period prior to April 2018.
Facebook: 100 developers might have improperly accessed Groups member data
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Specifically, there are around 100 partners who could have obtained such data. With at least 11 of them doing so in the last 2 months. There is no evidence that they have abused such data. But certainly, this situation does not help the company to make a good impression after the various problems of the past.
Facebook didnât disclose the names of these roughly 100 developers. Facebook platform partnerships head Konstantinos Papamiltiadis says that the apps were âprimarily social media management and video streaming apps, designed to make it easier for group admins to manage their groups more effectively and help members share videos to their groups.â We also donât know exactly what information was involved besides names and photos, nor how many users and groups the apps served.
