TechCrunch suggests Facebook may have another Cambridge Analytica on its hands. A scandal of that scale is highly unlikely. But it’s another example of potential user data exploitation via the social platform at a time when political pressure and regulatory scrutiny are intensifying. By taking the South Korean firm to court Facebook is attempting to fire a warning to those that do not abide by its terms and demonstrate to authorities that it can be trusted to enforce its rules around data. Facebook has tightened up its terms for app developers. But the question has to be asked: How many cases are yet to see the light of day – and how many developers may have intentionally or unintentionally breached rules over platform or user data? As researchers from cyber security firm UpGuard wrote last month on the discovery of half a billion user records left on publicly visible cloud servers, “the data genie cannot be put back in the bottle".

“Data about Facebook users has been spread far beyond the bounds of what Facebook can control today. Combine that plenitude of personal data with storage technologies that are often misconfigured for public access, and the result is a long tail of data about Facebook users that continues to leak.”