A Trump-affiliated data company stole 50 million Facebook profiles - here's how to protect your account from outside apps getting your info
I had allowed way more apps to access my Facebook data than I initially expected — 231 apps in total.
Even worse, I was letting apps my Facebook friends installed take some of my Facebook data, too, including my current city, and my likes.
While some of the apps I connected to Facebook were legitimate services, like Spotify or Airbnb, a lot of them were dumb one-off quizzes I took years ago. For example, this quiz about a 2009 Miley Cyrus hit.
This app could access my friends list, my status updates, my birthday, photos, and lots of other personal data. Luckily there was a button at the bottom to revoke access.
Now I have to do that for as many as 230 other apps. But there's a faster way to turn them all off. Here's how to do it.
On a mobile phone or desktop, navigate to Facebook.com and log in. Then we're going to turn "Facebook Platform" off. Start by tapping the button in the top corner.
Scroll all the way down to the bottom and select "account settings."
Click on "Apps."
Here's the setting you want to turn off.
After clicking through one extra screen, this is your choice. Go ahead, turn it off.
However, you might not want to turn all of your apps off at once. For example, you might log into your Spotify account using Facebook, and you don't want to lose all your playlists and other music.
In that case, you'll need to turn them off one-by-one. Go back to this screen and tap the "Logged in with Facebook" button.
This will bring up a list of your apps you've authorized to use your Facebook data. I can already tell there are a few issues here, including "Are You A Player?" quiz and "Borderlands 2 Code Giveaway."
I need to restrict the access individually. I clicked on "Are You A Player" and scrolled to the bottom. It had access to a lot of my data.
But be warned: Restricting the app from using your data doesn't mean it's deleted off the app-maker's servers — the exact issue that started the Cambridge Analytica controversy.
More details about the Cambridge Analytica data leak here.
Now you have to do that for each app individually. Have fun and stay safe!
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