Popular health and fitness apps scrambled to stop sending sensitive personal information to Facebook Inc. After The Wall Street Journal said Friday many were transmitting certain statistics about topics inclusive of their users’ weight and menstrual cycles.
Since Friday, at the least four of the apps that the Journal had diagnosed and contacted as part of its reporting issued updates to cut off transmission of sensitive records to Facebook, a brand new round of checking out confirmed Sunday. The apps that made the alternate encompass Flo Health Inc.’s Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker and Azumio Inc.’s Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, the tests confirmed.
Another popular food- and workout-logging app, Lose It!, from FitNow Inc., also stopped sending Facebook statistics, Sunday’s test confirmed. In a take a look at on Thursday, the app has been sending Facebook the weight users logged, alongside how an awful lot they’d won or misplaced and the caloric content of every meals item they logged.
The adjustments got here as Facebook itself contacted a few huge advertisers and builders in response to the Journal’s reporting, telling them it prohibits companions from sending Facebook any touchy records approximately users. The employer said it is running on new structures to detect and block uploads of such statistics via apps, in keeping with a person whose corporation become contacted via Facebook. In at the least one message, Facebook directed the first-rate developer to make certain that it had a criminal justification for all of the consumer data it sends Facebook in its app thru the software program-development package or SDK, the social network presents for apps, the character said.
“We work with the app developers the use of our SDK to ensure they adhere to our terms. In cases where we see violations, we paintings with the app developers to get into compliance and take movement as wished,” a Facebook spokeswoman stated.
