On 26 March, Facebook’s director of product partnerships Ime Archibong made public the social network’s intention to reward researchers for spotting instances of data misuse by app developers. The change is expected to take effect in the spring of 2018.
This modification of its vulnerability disclosure framework (VDF) is just one of the modifications Facebook is introducing after reports of data misuse on the platform made national headlines. To squelch similar abuses from occurring in the future, the social network has already modified the terms by which third-party apps can obtain access to a user’s list of friends. The Menlo Park social media giant will now review all requests for that user_friends permission and will look into what app developers intend to do with that data if granted the right to view it.
In the coming months, Facebook aims to review “all apps that had accesjs to large amounts of information before we changed our platform in 2014 to reduce data access,” writes Archibong. It will then conduct a full audit of any suspicious apps identified in the investigation. If it decides to remove any app for data misuse, Facebook will inform the community of this.
At the same time, the social networking company wants to make it easier for users to control the data they share with apps and to require heightened terms for business-to-business applications.