The social network came under scrutiny this year after a British-based firm, Cambridge Analytica, was found to have collected private details of millions of Facebook users for political profiling.
Facebook told the Wall Street Journal it would suspend the firm’s apps pending an investigation into how the Houston-based business collected, shares and stored user data.
Facebook faced sharp criticism after it emerged in March that personal data of about 50 million of its users had been harvested by UK-based consulting firm Cambridge Analytica without their permission. The information was allegedly used to help target political advertising world wide. In early April, Facebook estimated the number of users affected at around 87 million.
The scandal around violation of data use led to the initiation of several investigations in the United States and the United Kingdom.