A Facebook privacy checkup. I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech Daily. So no doubt you've heard all about the recent Facebook news and you know that your information on there is being shared in a lot of different ways. So now's a good time to do a little privacy checkup on the social media site because you want to see which apps can still access your personal information, including likes, photos, and potentially your friend list. And even more so, you
heard what happened. A single Facebook app was able to siphon off information about millions of users. Now, for starters, Facebook has clamped down a little bit. It no longer allows apps to reach us deep into your friend's information. You can share all of your information, including your likes, your friend list, all that good stuff, but they can't really get all of your friend's stuff as well. So that's a good thing, but it might still have people
on edge. So now's a good time to take a look at all the apps that can actually access your data. So what are these apps? Well, these are any apps that you've actually clicked that log in with Facebook button on the website. So let's say you go to a new site, like you know, like a food delivery site, you go there, it says, hey, log in with Facebook. It's much simpler because you don't have to create a new username and password. I never recommend that you do that.
This is for any website that you go to that says log in with Facebook. It's very convenient for you to log in with Facebook because you don't have to come up with that new username and password. But for security reasons, it is not a good thing to have those linked. You always want to create a separate log in for every website that you go to. So that's number one, so stop doing that. Number two. Basically, these apps that get access to your Facebook profile, how do
they do that. Well, let's say you're surfing Facebook and you come across a quiz, a personality quiz, and you click the quiz. Next thing you know, it says you know, it says some sort of Facebook button. You press that, and what that's doing is it's actually logging you in with your face Book account. So you don't even realize half the time that these apps are immediately going to work and sort of collecting all of your personal information.
So while it looks like a quiz on the outside, what the app is really doing is trying to collect as much data as possible on as many users as possible. So they're just harvesting information basically, So you want to stop doing that. Number one. Number two. Once you've done the damage, you can go back and see a list of all of the apps that you've authorized over the years.
And if you haven't taken a look at this list in a while, it may surprise you because even when you click out of that personality quiz, next thing you know, it is still taking your information for months or years after that. One thing these apps used to really do a lot is post to your page on your behalf.
So that's the other permission that you really want to be on the lookout for when you're surfing through Facebook, and anytime an app requests permission to post on your behalf, you want to say no. That is the number two thing, all right. So how do you get rid of all these lingering apps that have access to your information? Well, if you're on a desktop computer, you want to look for the little down arrow next to the question mark, which is usually in the upper right hand corner of
your screen. Then on the menu click settings. Okay, Now, from here you're going to look on your left hand side of the screen and click where it says apps. Once you click that, you should see a big box in the middle of your screen that says logged in with Facebook. Here you're going to see a list of all kinds of apps, some good, some bad. Look for anything that you don't recognize or that you don't use anymore. Go through this list one by one and really be
critical here. If you don't need it, get rid of it. You can always reactivate it later. Once you see something you don't like, hover over the name and a little pencil and an X icon should appear. Click the X for any app that you want to remove, and just keep doing this until you've cleared up the entire list. You don't have to get rid of everything. If there's
stuff that you use, then leave it there. But if there's stuff that you don't recognize, definitely get rid of it, and the next time you need it you can always relog in. Now. I know a lot of you are doing this from your mobile phone, so on Android and iOS it's pretty much the same process just looks a little bit different. But on Android and iOS you want to look for the three little menu bars. Some people call this a Hamburger menu, but it's right next to
your notification. So if you look for your notifications inside the Facebook app, it's right next to it. So on Android, this is in the upper right hand corner of your screen. On iOS it's in the lower right hand corner. And then the process is pretty much the same. You tap that menu bar, scroll until you see settings. Tap there, choose account Settings. Now choose apps, and then tap the section where it says logged in with Facebook. And again, go through this list and look for any app, website,
or service you don't use or you don't recognize. And then if you want to get rid of one, there's not going to be a little X. You have to tap it and then scroll all the way down and click remove app. And you can do this as many times as necessary. Now, one more thing you can do if you're just curious about all this kind of stuff, is you can tap on any of these apps or services and kind of see what they have access to.
And it's really fascinating because you see that some of them say we have access to your personal information, your email address, your like list, your photos, your list of friends. I mean, it's really crazy the information that is floating around out there on Facebook. Now, I'm not going to say Facebook is evil. I'm just not because Facebook has connected people in amazing ways. I just think that you have to be very cognizant about the information that you're
sharing on this social media platform. Just imagine that pretty much anything that you share could be public in one way or another. Let's look at the most basic way something that's private could be shared publicly, and that's by someone taking a picture of it. So let's say I'm friends with someone on Facebook. Privately, I say something private to them. A friend is looking over their shoulder as they read my message or my post, and they take a snapshot of it. Next thing you know, they share
that snapshot in a public way. Well, now your private information has just gone public in the simplest way possible. And I'm not saying that's right, but you just have to think about it. Nothing is truly private when it's in print, when it's posted online, it just isn't. So if you want the full directions on this, I know it's a lot, just go to my website rich on
tech dot TV. I've got this all written out. It's something very important you should do and help the friends in your life that are a little less tech savvy to do this as well. Thanks so much for listening. Please rate and review this podcast in the Apple Podcasts app that way more people discover it. I'm rich damiro Rich on tech dot tv. Thanks for listening. Talk to you real soon.