The big platforms say they have built-in protection, such as human reviews and automated scanning tools to detect abuse by partners. But software experts say policies are toothless because auditing is lax; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, under intense public pressure, said on Wednesday the company would now perform audits of the information it shared with partners before it tightened rules in 2014. Dartmouth University engineering professor Geoffrey Parker, who has assigned students to develop apps based on APIs, said automated policing methods will detect spam-like apps and brazen efforts to steal data. It is much more difficult to enforce bans on storing or mashing together information, or acting against users' interest, he said. Some companies added safeguards in the last several years. Facebook stopped allowing developers access to information on its users' friends. But compliance audits were minimal, a former employee said on the condition of anonymity. Twitter and LinkedIn limited free public access.