Facebook allows 5000 developers to gather user data due to a serious flaw

Facebook is in trouble again after the company admitted that personal data of ‘inactive’ users was wrongly shared for longer than it was authorized. In a blog post by the company, Facebook said that 5000 third-party developers continued to receive users’ information for when they used Facebook to sign in to various apps. The information was sent even after users had not used the app in more than 90 days. The issue with the time frame is that it even goes against Facebook’s policy. The policy states that third-party app developers would not receive personal information about a user if they have not accessed the app in 90 days. 

Facebook flaw allows developers to access users data

The company said, in a statement that, “Recently, we discovered that in some instances apps continued to receive the data that people had previously authorised, even if it appeared they hadn't used the app in the last 90 days.”. Basically, how this happened was that if two friends who were both on Facebook had used a particular app, and only one of them was using the app after 90 days, the app could still gather information from the person who has been inactive for that time. "For example, this could happen if someone used a fitness app to invite their friends from their home town to a workout, but we didn't recognise that some of their friends had been inactive for many months," the company also stated. 

In other Facebook news, the company released a TikTok inspired app called Collab and you can read more about it, here. Recently, Google Photos also stopped the auto-backup of media files from WhatsApp, Facebook and other apps to save space. You can read more about that here. And finally, you can now also bulk delete all your Facebook posts as well, right here. 

Follow Us

Digit NewsDesk

Digit News Desk writes news stories across a range of topics. Getting you news updates on the latest in the world of tech. View Full Profile