Geoffrey A. Fowler and Emily Steel report:
Facebook Inc. said that a data broker has been paying application developers for identifying user information, and that it had placed some developers on a six-month suspension from its site because of the practice.
The announcement, which Facebook made on its developers’ blog Friday, follows an investigation by Facebook into a privacy breach that The Wall Street Journal reported in October.
[…]
Facebook didn’t specify which app developers it had suspended, but said it affects fewer than a dozen, mostly small ones. Facebook also said it was adding a mechanism so app developers that need to share a unique identifier with outside parties, such as content partners, can do so in an anonymous fashion. This new function will be released next week, and will be required of all apps by Jan. 1, 2011.
Read more in the Wall Street Journal.