The company said that it continued sharing user data with approximately 5,000 developers even after their application’s access expired.
The incident is related to a security control that Facebook added to its systems following the Cambridge Analytica scandal of early 2018.
Responding to criticism that it allowed app developers too much access to user information, Facebook added at the time a new mechanism to its API that prevented apps from accessing a user’s data if the user did not use the app for more than 90 days.
However, Facebook said that it recently discovered that in some instances, this safety mechanism failed to activate and allowed some apps to continue accessing user information even past the 90-day cutoff date.
[…]
“From the last several months of data we have available, we currently estimate this issue enabled approximately 5,000 developers to continue receiving [user] information,” Papamiltiadis said.
The company didn’t clarify how many users were impacted, and had their data made available to app developers even after they stopped using the app.
Source: Facebook says 5,000 app developers got user data after cutoff date | ZDNet
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