Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941
The apps are deemed malicious by doing things such as capturing pictures and audio when the app is closed, or making an unusually large amount of network calls. These allow apps to access a range of information from Facebook profiles, like name, location and email address.
Trustlook discovered the malicious apps using a formula, which created a risk score for apps based on more than 80 pieces of information for each app, including permissions, libraries, risky API calls and network activity.
"The Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal was mainly a result of developers abusing the permissions associated with the Facebook Login feature," Trustlook researchers said, in a post. "When people use Facebook Login, they grant the app's developer a range of information from their Facebook profile. Back in 2015, Facebook also allowed developers to collect some information from the friend networks of people who used Facebook Login. That means that while a single user may have agreed to hand over their data, developers could also access some data about their friends. Needless to say, this realization among Facebook users has caused a huge backlash."
Source: https://threatpost.com/tens-of-thousands-of-malicious-apps-using-facebook-apis/131566/
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @11:41PM (1 child)
Relax, sheep, this is for your own good. We will tell you what to buy. We will tell you who to vote for. We will tell you that transgender people are normal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @09:19AM
Whoah hey - whoever modded this flamebait; please rethink. Trans folk need to be accepted, not shoehorned into normal. Trans is not currently the mean or median, and life is fucking hard in the overwhelming majority of places in the world, USA included (which by tone I take above to be). That's like saying the black experience in the USA is "normal". Not for any normal I want to live in. Let's nail acceptance, then normal life will become available.