Facebook changing App Review Policy

With the latest revelations about user data leaking far beyond the intentions of Facebook or users, the social media company is in the midst of changes.

As I ready my app for the app store, I was reviewing my Facebook developer dashboard and saw this

We are not reviewing apps at this time due to changes we are making to the Facebook Platform

The current review policy is here and for my app, I believe no review is required. I grab a user’s name and email address only. And by the policy, that does not trigger review.

Facebook did post this notice regarding the changes they are making to the review policy.

Cracking Down On Platform Abuse and in brief Facebook plans to:

  1. Review our platform. We will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform in 2014 to reduce data access, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. If we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them from our platform.
  2. Tell people about data misuse. We will tell people affected by apps that have misused their data. This includes building a way for people to know if their data might have been accessed via “thisisyourdigitallife.” Moving forward, if we remove an app for misusing data, we will tell everyone who used it.
  3. Turn off access for unused apps. If someone hasn’t used an app within the last three months, we will turn off the app’s access to their information.
  4. Restrict Facebook Login data. We are changing Login, so that in the next version, we will reduce the data that an app can request without app review to include only name, profile photo and email address. Requesting any other data will require our approval.
  5. Encourage people to manage the apps they use. We already show people what apps their accounts are connected to and control what data they’ve permitted those apps to use. Going forward, we’re going to make these choices more prominent and easier to manage.
  6. Reward people who find vulnerabilities. In the coming weeks we will expand Facebook’s bug bounty program so that people can also report to us if they find misuses of data by app developers.
Written on April 6, 2018