the Russian Internet giant Mail.ru, which has ties to the Russian government, has accessed user data, with recent reports that Facebook has given Mail.ru Has special access to user data after 2015, after Facebook officially canceled the order to allow third-party applications to access user data.
Since March, news about the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm has been used by Facebook to collect data on 87 million people without their consent , so the social network was forced to respond frequently to how users were given data and who gave the data. Immediately after the scandal, Facebook rushed to defend itself in a blog post: "In 2014, an API element has been changed to prevent applications from collecting user friend data, as did the Cambridge Analytics application." Since then, Facebook has explained that although this change was announced in 2014, applications that had access to user friend data continued to retain this access until May 2015.
In more than 700 pages of written responses delivered to the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives late last month , Facebook acknowledged that some applications had obtained this access for a longer period of up to six months to allow them to comply with the new rules . There were dozens of third-party applications on the list, including dating apps such as Hinge and music streaming services like Spotify, but surprisingly the Russian Internet giant Mail.ru was on this list.
According to Facebook: "Mail.ru was given a two-week extension to filter feature on two messaging applications that enable users to see their Facebook friends lists and communicate with people who also have Mail.ru applications during the addition. At least the app was only available to access friends' lists, not any information about your interests or interests. "
"Mail.ru has run hundreds of applications on our platform, all operating under Facebook's old rules, which allowed application developers to collect user friend data, and some of these applications started working early in 2009."
"Some applications were built before we changed our platform in 2015, so they had access to the older version of our platform, which made it possible for users to agree to share information about themselves and their friends as well," a Facebook spokesman said.
Facebook said: Most of the applications of Mail.ru were test applications remained private and only a few were launched publicly. Which did not share details about the number of users that Mail.ru applications may have obtained their data without their consent. " The company added that the Mail.ru application group has not been able to access user profile data since May 2015, after our API was changed.
So far Facebook is still investigating Mail.ru applications along with all other applications that had access to large amounts of user data before the changes, but the spokesman says: "The investigation is not a conviction in itself, we have not found Any indication of abuse with Mail.ru. If we detect any suspicious activity or potential abuse, then we will review the company's activity officially. "
"We assume that while changing the Facebook API, the terms for customers with common applications have changed and have not been updated to the latest version, we are definitely cooperating with Facebook seriously to meet the needs of our products," a Mail.ru spokesman wrote. According to Facebook regulations. "
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