It’s amazing how many apps we use on a daily basis that ask us to log in using either our Facebook or Twitter accounts. Most of us don’t think much of it and just go ahead and click on the button but over time that amounts to a serious amount of apps that have access to your information. Now it’s important to remember that most of these will be trust worthy apps and they sometimes don’t ask for more than your email address but there are some simple steps you should be taking to protect yourself.
You’ll want to head over to this page (and be logged in to your Facebook account) and once you do you’ll see a long list of the apps that you are currently using. I knew I’d be using a lot but even I was surprised to see that I had given access to 137 apps in total. Facebook can remove any dodgy apps for you but we would strongly recommend that you go in and manually remove all the apps you no longer use. Chances are you will have entered lots of competitions or games over the years and you no longer need to be granting those people access to your information.
As the amount of information that is being shared through the ticker on Facebook increases and more people can see what you are up to this page is more important that ever. After clicking on edit settings you can go in to each individual app and change the permissions. The most important setting is probably who you share it with. Although most app makers won’t be happy if you do want to keep your info private then change the setting to just “friends”. This means anything you do via the app will only ever be seen by your friends on Facebook and not spread further.
It’s also a good idea to go down through all the apps on the page and delete any that you don’t use any more. Simply go in to settings and then hit the delete button.
It’s a little easier on Twitter to find all the applications that you have used in the past as you simply have to log in and head over to this page. Again you will be surprised at just how many apps you have given access to in the past so remove any of them that you no longer use. We are not saying that those apps will do anything with your information but you should really only have a handful of apps that you actually use on this list.
It’s not a very glamorous tip today but it’s more about doing a little spring cleaning for your social media channels. I had over 200 apps in total accessing my info before I did this so make sure you do the same. It will only take you about 10 minutes and you’ll be surprised and how much stuff you have actually signed up to.
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