The new-ish Facebook Timeline doesn’t seem to be as popular as its originators thought it would be. The latest addition to it, the ‘trending’ section at the top of the news ticker, is upsetting thousands of users. On our own Facebook page, which is available here: https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple?ref=hl  , we were asked about removing that item from our Facebook page. We discovered a way of doing it but we don’t recommend using it. Here’s why.

When a site becomes as popular as Facebook has become, many third-party applications pop up around the Internet. A few of these apps are totally safe, others aren’t. The app that will get rid of this particular pest on Facebook isn’t one that we can recommend. Here’s how their site looks:

What is your first impression? Does it look like a reputable site? We’ve been around the Internet for a long time and sites like this should be avoided, in our opinion. Would you trust your Facebook profile, password and personal information to these folks? We wouldn’t.

The other thing that gives Facebook Purity less of our confidence is the fact that, while it’s been around since 2009, only 70,000 people would be labelled ‘happy users’. Indeed, their own Facebook page has less than 65,000 likes. If this app did what it says it can do, we’d think it would be a lot more popular than this.

The real problem with these third-party apps is that they can change your whole Facebook experience, far beyond what we’d call normal. Facebook itself is blocking the url. Whether this is a legitimate danger or not, that in itself should tell you something about Facebook Purity.

From time to time we’ll look at other apps such as Facebook Purity but, for now, we’d advise you to steer clear of it. We’ve posted many suggestions about how to fix these annoyances on your own without the need of these add-ons. The fewer apps that know your information, the better off you’ll be.

Thanks for reading!