How to stop 100s of Facebook apps giving away your PRIVATE data with one easy trick
MORE than 50 million Facebook users have had their personal data harvested to help create political propaganda – so you need to wise up about social network security.
Here's a quick guide to checking what apps can see your Facebook info, how to stop them, and why it's important.
The good news is that in April, Facebook made it much easier for you to kill these rogue apps in one go.
In March, it was revealed that a personality quiz called 'thisisyourdigitallife' harvested data about 270,000 Facebook users who gave answers – and 50 million of their Facebook friends.
It shone a light on the amount of data Facebook holds on us, and the risks of giving apps access to your information.
In this case, research firm Cambridge Analytica supposedly used the info to help get US President Donald Trump elected, and even to convince people that Brexit was a good idea – all through propaganda.
It's prompted some users to delete Facebook altogether.
But if you want to keep Facebook, you need to check which apps currently have access to your information.
It's easy enough – use the following link to see which apps you're logged in on using Facebook:
Avid social media users could have hundreds of apps listed, many of which you may not remember even subscribing to.
These apps get access to your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, networks, username and user ID.
They'll also get access to your Friends list, and any other information that you choose to make public.
The good news is that you can deny access to any of these apps without much bother.
On desktop, simply select the tick boxes on the apps you want to kill access to.
Then press 'remove' at the top of the page – and poof, they're gone.
On mobile, open your Facebook app and then head to your profile menu – an icon that looks like three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other.
From there, scroll down and press Settings and Privacy, then choose Account Settings and scroll down to find Apps.
Then choose the Logged In With Facebook option, and you'll find a big list of apps you've logged into using Facebook.
Simply click on the ones you want to bin, and then hit Remove at the top of the page.
By clicking view, you'll also be able to see all of the information that each app holds on you.
It's very likely that you'll have dozens of connected apps, but some power users are reporting hundreds – and even thousands! – on their lists.
Twitter is awash with posts from surprised Facebook users who didn't realise how many companies had access to their data.
GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives told The Sun that the average Facebook user will have "around five" apps connected to Facebook.
But if you use the service a lot, it's possible you'll have loads more.
If you've got a huge number of apps and don't want to manually delete them all, you can completely shut out all connected apps.
But this means you might lose access to some important apps – maybe you want to keep Spotify, for example.
Confused by the Facebook breach? Check out our helpful guides...
- Facebook data scandal EXPLAINED
- What is Cambridge Analytica?
- Where is Mark Zuckerberg?
- How to see ALL your Facebook data
- How to delete your Facebook account
- Why it's time to delete Facebook
- How to stop Facebook apps handing over your data
To shut out all apps, go to Settings > Apps > Platform > Edit > Off.
A final warning: the apps on your Logged In With Facebook list may still hold data on you, even after you've removed the app.
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The bad news is that there's no easy way of fixing this.
The only proper solution is to individually contact every single app you've ever logged in with, and then request that your data is deleted.
Are you worried about the amount of data Facebook and other services hold on you? Let us know in the comments.
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