Facebook suspends 200 apps following Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook said Monday morning that it had suspended roughly 200 apps amid an ongoing investigation prompted by the Cambridge Analytica scandal into whether services on the site had improperly used or collected users' personal data.

The company said in an update, its first since the social network announced the internal audit in March, that the apps would undergo a “thorough investigation” into whether they had misused user data.

Facebook declined to provide more detail on which apps were suspended, how many people had used them or what red flags had led them to suspect those apps of misuse.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company will examine tens of thousands of apps that could have accessed or collected large amounts of users' personal information before the site's more restrictive data rules for third-party developers took effect in 2015.

The company said teams of internal and external experts will conduct interviews and lead on-site inspections of certain apps during its ongoing audit. Thousands of apps have been investigated so far, the company said, adding that any app that refuses to cooperate or failed the audit would be banned from the site.

The suspensions support a long-running defense of Aleksandr Kogan, the researcher who provided Facebook data to Cambridge Analytica, that many apps besides his had gathered vast amounts of user information under Facebook's previously lax data-privacy rules.

One of the 200 apps, the personality quiz myPersonality, was suspended in early April and is under investigation, Facebook officials said. Researchers at the University of Cambridge had set up the app to collect personal information about Facebook users and inform academic research. But its data may not have been properly secured, as first reported by New Scientist, which found login credentials for the app's database available online.

"This is clearly a breach of the terms that academics agree to when requesting a collaboration with myPersonality," the University of Cambridge said in a statement Monday. "Once we learned of this, we took immediate steps to stop access to the account and to stop further data sharing."