Facebook has revealed that apps developed by the Russian technology conglomerate Mail.ru Group may have had access to user data, even beyond what it allowed after a policy change in 2014, again expanding the scope of the Cambridge Analytica probe into misuse of user data on the platform. The social media company has said that the Mail.ru Group developed hundreds of Facebook apps, only a handful of which actually went live on Facebook. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal emerged last year, Facebook defended itself by stating that it had introduced an API change in 2014 to prevent apps from obtaining users' friends' data, as had happened in the case of Cambridge Analytica. However, Facebook said it allowed for an extension of two weeks for two Mail.ru apps to wind down a feature on two messaging apps. The feature allowed users to see their Facebook friend list and message people who also were using the Mail.Ru apps. During the extension, Mail.ru could only access to people's friends list, but no data about the friends' likes or comments. But Mail.ru was already running apps that had never gone live, all of which operated under Facebook's old data rules, meaning that Mail.ru apps may have collected your friends' data which was allowed under Facebook developer rules at the time. US Senator Mark Warner, who is on Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN that the development called for further scrutiny into Facebook's relationship with Mail.Ru. "In the last 6 months we've learned that Facebook had…
