Facebook: how to control what friends leak to apps about you
If you are using Facebook, and who is not really, you are probably aware that what you post publicly on the site is accessible by anyone. That's why you can limit the accessibility of information to certain groups of users, friends only for example or friends of friends, so that information are not just available to anyone who happens to stumble upon your profile.
Things become more complicated when it comes to apps on the social networking site. If you want to run apps, you usually have to allow them to access information about you that they request. This can be your email address, photos you have posted, your friends list or your age and gender.
That's still fairly accessible on the website, as you get a list of all permissions that an application requests on Facebook before it is enabled. In other words, you have to explicitly allow the app before it gets access to the data.
What many Facebook users do not know is that there is another way that part of their personal information may leak to apps, and this time without their doing.
Other user groups may have access to your information. Friends for instance usually have access to most information that you have published on Facebook. If those friends run apps that request information from friends, then your data may leak to apps even if you do not want that to happen.
Facebook has privacy settings for that however that you can modify to make sure that only information that you are comfortable with leak to apps your friends run.
Let me show you how you configure that option.
Apps other use
You need to open the App Settings on Facebook. You can do so either by clicking on the link int he last sentence, or with a click on the small dropdown arrow at the top right of your profile, the selection of settings from the context menu, and the selection of Apps on the page that opens up.
Here you find listed all apps that you are using. You may want to go through the list as well just to make sure that only apps that you are still using are in that list. If you find old apps listed here that you do not use anymore, retract the permissions you gave them and remove them from your profile.
Below that is the "Apps others use" section. Click on the edit button to the right to change the data that apps that others use have access to.
All checked items are accessible by apps that your friends run while all unchecked items are not. If you do not want any of the data to be accessible, uncheck all items and click on the save changes button afterwards.
Note that you do not have control over all profile information here. The only option to block all information from being accessible by apps is to turn off the apps platform. This may have consequences though, as you cannot use apps or games anymore, and also cannot use Facebook to log in on third party sites or services.
If you do not do any of those, you may want to consider turning of Platform apps though.
Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.