{"id":1058,"date":"2011-01-25T10:00:59","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2011-02-23T21:56:56","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T03:56:56","slug":"configuring-your-facebook-application-security-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepizzy.net\/blog\/2011\/01\/configuring-your-facebook-application-security-settings\/","title":{"rendered":"Configuring your Facebook Application Security Settings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FacebookAfter you have properly configured your Facebook profile privacy settings<\/a>, the next hole to plug is one that most people forget about: Facebook Applications. If you’re not careful, you could easily wind up giving away permission to all your personal information on Facebook, or even your username and password itself. We’re going to put a stop to that, right now.<\/p>\n

Configuring Facebook Application Security<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a>One of the lures of Facebook that attracted people away from MySpace (aside from the lack of smiley ads and whoring out of everyone who ever picked up a musical instrument) is the applications. Whether you realize it or not, applications first appeared on Facebook around 2006, but didn’t take off until 2007. And if you didn’t realize it has been that long, then chances are you don’t realize you may have residual applications still sucking down your personal information. You may also be unaware that the application you just installed to “see how many people viewed your Facebook profile<\/a>” or “see what my first status update was<\/a>” or any of the “OMG you have to click this link to see [insert something outrageous]” were actually scams. Now it’s time to clean up all that crap you’ve installed on your Facebook profile.<\/p>\n

Privacy Settings > Application Security Settings<\/h2>\n

Open up your Privacy Settings (as in the image above) and then locate the “Edit your settings<\/strong>” link in the Apps and Websites<\/strong> area…<\/p>\n

\"Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

Once you’re inside of the Applications Settings area, you should see something like the image below, which lists all the different application settings available to configure. We’ll start with the Red box, “Apps you use<\/strong>” > Edit Settings button…<\/p>\n

\"Facebook<\/a><\/h2>\n

Facebook Privacy > Apps and Websites > Apps you use<\/h2>\n

Click on the Edit Settings button for the “Apps you use<\/strong>” section (the red box in the image above) and you should see a list of all the apps you’ve ever given access to your information in the past, and haven’t yet removed. It should look something like this…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you want to see what information each individual application has access to, you can click the Edit Settings<\/strong> link for that application, and take a look. The Ping.FM app looks like this…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are a couple rules of thumb you could use to figure out which applications to remove, and which ones to keep.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Do I actively use this application, on a more-than-monthly<\/em> basis? <\/strong>Basically, if you don’t constantly need this application in order for your Facebook experience to stay in tact (i.e. pulling your twitter updates, posting your RSS feed from your blog as notes, updating via Ping.FM, etc) then you probably don’t need to keep it installed. This will probably get rid of the majority of your applications that are just sitting there sucking up your personal information.<\/li>\n
  2. Did this application complete its purpose?<\/strong> Was the app used to collect your status updates for the year, find out your\u00c2\u00a0Aura’s\u00c2\u00a0Color, or some other thing that you had to install it once, and got one result, and never touched it again? If so, you don’t need this application to linger around – it has served its purpose.<\/li>\n
  3. Did this application fail to complete its purpose?<\/strong> Was the app originally for something like adding a Dislike button, or showing your profile views, or finding your biggest\u00c2\u00a0Facebook\u00c2\u00a0stalkers…but never actually gave you accurate information or came through with its end of the deal? Then the app was a phony, and was created for the sole purpose of collecting information about you, and you should have deleted it the day you installed it and it failed.<\/li>\n
  4. Do you remember even installing this application?<\/strong> If you don’t even remember installing it, remove it. Don’t convince yourself of the fallacy “I don’t know what it is, so I better keep it in case I need it.” This isn’t like Computer Software – if you end up needing the app sometime in the future, then the app will make you reinstall it again.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    To remove the applications:<\/p>\n