Facebook Admits to Improperly Sharing User Data – Again

Social media giant Facebook had admitted to once again improperly sharing user data with third-party developers, after repeatedly promising users that it would not do so.

Mashable reports that social media giant Facebook has once again admitted to sharing user data with third-party developers even after specifically telling users it would cease doing so. In a blog post, Facebook announced that thousands of developers received updates to users’ non-public information long past the point when they should have.

Facebook stated that for an unspecified amount of users, the company had failed to cut off developers’ access to their personal data as it promised it would in 2018. Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s vice president of platform partnerships, writes in the post: “[Recently], we discovered that in some instances apps continued to receive the data that people had previously authorized, even if it appeared they hadn’t used the app in the last 90 days. For example, this could happen if someone used a fitness app to invite their friends from their  hometown to a workout, but we didn’t recognize that some of their friends had been inactive for many months.”

This is far from the first time this has happened, in late 2019 Papamiltiadis wrote in a similar blog post that the site had given developers access to private user data, stating: “[We] recently found that some apps retained access to group member information, like names and profile pictures in connection with group activity, from the Groups API, for longer than we intended. We know at least 11 partners accessed group members’ information in the last 60 days.”

And in 2018, Papamiltiadis was forced to explain why some third-party firms had access to vast amounts of private user data, he assured users then that the company working to ensure that this would not happen again — the same assurance he’s giving now. Papamiltiadis wrote at the time: “We’ve taken a number of steps this year to limit developers’ access to people’s Facebook information, and as part of that ongoing effort, we’re in the midst of reviewing all our APIs and the partners who can access them.”

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com