According to CNN Tech, Facebook said that the Mail.Ru Group has developed hundreds of Facebook apps:
Some of them are unpublished test apps, but only two apps have been granted the extension for 2 weeks, which allows them to collect friend data after the deadline.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, Democratic leader, Senator Mark Warner said in a statement that the relationship between the two companies deserves further scrutiny.
As far as we know in the past 6 months, Facebook’s control over the collection and use of user data by third parties is lax.
Now, we understand that the Russian technology giant's executives are closely related to the Kremlin, and it has hundreds of thousands of integrated applications that collect user data.
If the message is accurate, we need to determine which user information is shared by mail.ru, and what it might do through the captured data.
Before 2015, when users interacted on a Facebook application developed by a third party, the developer could not only get the user's data, but also the friends of the user - including name, gender, birthday, location, photo, and Like and so on.
In 2014, Facebook announced that the policy has been adjusted and will limit developer access to user friend data in May 2015.
However, two weeks ago, Facebook confessed to Congress that after May 2015, it also granted 61 companies access to such data, including Rail.Ru.
Facebook submitted a written response to the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, which included this application.
On Tuesday, Ime Archibong, vice president of Facebook partnership, said in an interview with CNN:
The company did not find any clue that the Mail.Ru Group improperly used Facebook's user data, but admitted that the investigation is continuing.
However, he did not answer the question, that is, whether Facebook has the ability to determine how the Russian company can obtain data.
Facebook is not willing to disclose any data about the US citizen that Mail.Ru has received, and refuses to disclose the specific method of its identification. It just reiterates that the company and the developer will keep it secret.