Saturday 14 May 2011

Starter Guide to Manage and Block Facebook Apps, Websites and People

Facebook being one of the strongest social network in the world holds a lot of information about anyone and unless you are very careful on what you are sharing,  People who you become friends with, Apps which you interact with, Games which you play on Facebook can collect a lot of data about you which you never wanted everybody to know.
Though many of us do not bother about it much but if you do Facebook has features in place which lets you control the amount of information you share with anybody. All these settings can be found under Privacy Settings but in this post I am concentrating on How you can Manage Apps and Block users, apps and websites from accessing your information.
Facebook Privacy Apps Websites and Block Lists

Privacy Settings for Apps, Games and Websites :

The first thing you need to do is check how many apps are connected to your profile and what data they are accessing. Though Facebook Apps show what data they take but there are some permissions that can be removed after you allow them even if they are not optional at that moment.
What data the Apps have permission for ?
For example take a look at the Skype App for Facebook. When I first added this to my account I had given permission for access to my basic information, Access My Friends Information, Post to My wall,  Access posts in my news feed, Access my data at any point. Now if you look at the image you will see that last three are optional and can be removed. If you do not use that features you can easily remove them without any issue.
Facebook App Settings for Privacy
When did you use the app last time ?
The second thing for apps you need to check is the last time you had used it. Right under the permission list you have that information. If you find that you aren’t using the app from a long time, evaluate if you will use this in near future, if not remove it. You can add them anytime you want and is very easy process.
What data you are sharing through your Friends to the Apps ?
In the example above, you saw that the app asked for permission to use my friend’s information. First of all this is not a bad thing because depending on how the application is built, it can bring connectivity such as if my Friend has listed his number I can see this information in my Skype account and call them.
Now lets say I do not want my number or anything similar to be accessible to any of the apps. To do this, check the setting which is under  Info accessible through your friends.
Facebook Apps Info accessible through your friends
Remember when you remove any option from here it only makes them unavailable to apps which your friends use them and is separate from the information that your friends can directly.
The next three options are for Games and App activity which you can decide to share with everybody or just keep it to yourself. This option doesn’t make a huge difference so I will just leave it on you to decide.
Do you want to get recommendations about a website from friends ?
This feature is really helpful if you want to get any kind of feedback from some online websites. Facebook has partnered with websites like Bing, Pandora etc which helps you get recommendation. Though you can only turn of this completely not partially but Facebook says “When you first arrive at the following sites, you’ll see a notification message and an option to turn off the personalized experience”. Just remember this.
Do you want somebody to find you ?
Public Search in Facebook makes you findable by some long lost friend or an Employer who want to see what you do on Facebook.  So depending on how you want it turn it on or off.

The Nuke Button : Block List

You use this when nothing else works out. Experience on Facebook is different for different people.
  • Sometimes you friend with all sometimes you think somebody is spamming you.
  • You see hundreds of invites from the same app from your friends and You see a friend sending you hundreds of invites from different app every day.
  • You are busy so don’t have time to for Facebook Events and there are apps which like to block.
Block List feature in Facebook gives you answer for all of these.
Facebook Privacy Block ListHow do you block someone before he or she sends a request ?
Add his email id under Block Users. This will make sure he or she will not be able to even send a friend request to you.

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