Thousands of apps using Facebook data were investigated and some 200 suspended as part of the social media giant’s audit for data misuse, first announced in March.

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company said it was conducting an in-depth review of its apps which had access to large amounts of information before it changed its policy in 2014 to reduce data access.

As part of this, its plan was to inform people if an app was removed for data misuse and ban developers found to have misused personally identifiable information.

In a blog post, Ime Archibong, VP of product partnerships, wrote: “We have large teams of internal and external experts working hard to investigate these apps as quickly as possible. To date thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended — pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data.”

“Where we find evidence that these or other apps did misuse data, we will ban them and notify people via a website. It will show people if they or their friends installed an app that misused data before 2015,” the post added.

Archibong said there is a lot more work to be done to find all the apps that may have misused people’s Facebook data, a task expected to take some time.

The post explained that the investigation process “is in full swing”, and has two phases: a comprehensive review to identify every app which had access to Facebook data and, where issues are found, Facebook will conduct interviews, make requests for information and perform audits that may include on-site inspections.