This post is about the other side of Facebook apps, the side you probably don’t even know about. Here’s the scoop. When you add an app, it asks for certain permissions. One of those permissions is access to your personal information. Did you know that Facebook shares your information with apps even if you don’t use those apps? Unless you say no, Facebook share your personal data with apps that your friends use. Here’s how to limit this theft of your private details.
1. Same as yesterday, go to the top right corner of any Facebook page, click the down arrow and choose Settings. Next, click Apps. On the page that comes up, look for this section underneath the list of apps that you use:
‘Apps others use’ is where we are headed today.
2. This is what you see next. Remember that these are not even apps that you use, just apps that your friends use:
Make sure all of these are unchecked.
Make sure you uncheck everything on this menu. Everything. Don’t be surprised that you didn’t know about all of this. Facebook tends to hide such things, hoping you won’t be able to find them. That’s why we’re here.
Facebook tells you that sharing all of this data is to ‘make their experience better and more social’. What do you think? How will letting an app know everything you share with Facebook make things better for your friend’s Facebook experience? It won’t. All this does is give advertisers a fuller picture of your friend’s friends…in other words you!
Not only does Facebook hide the fact that foreign apps use your data, they penalize you for trying to increase your privacy. Sure, you can turn off all Platform apps but ‘you will not be able to use any games or apps yourself’. To us, this seems downright petty. Let us know what you think about all of this.
Thanks for reading! Comments, questions, suggestions are all welcomed. Use the form at the bottom or Like our Facebook page. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simply on Facebook
Facebook has made it very easy, almost too easy, for users to add apps to their profile. As you know, many apps hit you up even when you’re quietly surfing around outside of your Facebook profile? Want to comment on something? Sure, just let this app access your Facebook account. Want to sign a petition? Easy! Just give us clearance to snoop around your Facebook profile. Before you let apps access your data, you’d better find out what kind of things they can see. You might be surprised at the extent and the duration of this access.
1. From any page on Facebook, click on the tiny icon on the very top right, it looks like an arrow pointing down, and choose ‘Settings’ on the menu that pops out:
Settings is where we’re headed.
2. Next, look for the word Apps on the left side. Click on it:
‘Apps’ is next.
3. The next part is a bit tricky so read this carefully. Facebook only shows you the most recent apps that you’ve used on the Apps menu that comes up. What you’re going to do here is to edit all of your apps, once you see how to do it, but note that you have to click on ‘Show All Apps’ down at the bottom to access the full list of ones that you use. For now, click on the word Edit on any app that’s on this page:
Some apps are here, including games, but more are hidden. Make sure you edit them all.
4. It doesn’t matter which one you choose but click Edit on one. Here’s what you see next:
You might be surprised at everything a Facebook app says that it needs.
5. Surprised yet? Apps need to use just about everything, at least they say they do. You can change the visibility, remove the ‘posting on your behalf’ ability and change when the app notifies you. We have ours set to ‘Never’. You can also see when the app last accessed your data. Make sure you are comfortable with all of this ‘information sharing’ before you click Close at the top. If you’re not comfortable with it all, maybe you should remove the app. Click ‘Remove app’ to see what surprises lurk behind that link:
Did you think it would be that easy? It seems that apps may keep your information even though you have deleted them.
Can you see why we’re concerned about these seemingly simple apps? Not only do they tell you that they require access to all of your personal information, they keep this data even after you remove their permissions. Think about it. Facebook collects your personal details and markets this data to many different kinds of apps. Something that seemed fun and innocent at the time has suddenly changed its tone, hasn’t it?
We hope that we’ve opened your eyes a bit about Facebook’s apps. Share this with your friends and family. There’s no reason why you should feel obligated to share your personal info with anyone you don’t know. If you’re hooked on the games that Facebook offers, think about what the games get out of it all. They’re free, right? Maybe, just maybe, the games take your personal data and fine tune the ads that you see on their pages. Your personal details are helping the apps, not you. We suggest that you create a totally fake Facebook account just to play games. Let your friends know that it’s you and play away all day, free from sharing your personal details with strangers.
Thanks for reading!
(Just so you know, if you want to comment here, you don’t have to sign up through Facebook. We do ask for an email address but you can use a fake one, we will never know. Your email is never shown to anyone. We only ask for it in order to send you a personalized response. This response is automatic, we don’t actually use it ourselves. Also, liking our Facebook page doesn’t require any data sharing. We get a notice that you’ve liked our page, that’s it. All we can see is whatever information a stranger sees when someone searches for you. We cannot access any other information than that, nor do we want to.)
It’s a bit scary for us to advise our readers to use an ad blocking extension but we’re about to do it anyway. Computers Made Simple makes a bit of money from the ads on our pages but we find the ads that are on Facebook very annoying. Then again, maybe some of our readers find out ads annoying, too. Regardless, here’s how you can block most of the annoyances that Facebook throws at you. Here’s how:
1. Download and install Google Chrome – We’re always suggesting that you use Chrome anyway so this step should be easy. Chrome is fast, always up to date and warns you when you’re about to step off the path into a malware minefield. You can’t go wrong with it.
2. Once Chrome is installed, look for the three horizontal lines up on the very top right corner: Click on the lines, scroll down to Tools, click on Tools then click on Extensions when the side menu opens.
Extensions is what we want.
3. Once you’re on the extensions page, look down at the bottom for the words ‘Get more extensions’ and click the link – Chrome has hundreds of extensions, essentially ‘plugins’, that you can add. We’ve written about some of them before, things such as Facebook Album Mod, etc. When the extension page comes up, type ‘adblock plus’ in the search window on the top left:
Click on Facebook Customizer then click on Launch App in the next window.
4. There are a few screens that follow, click OK on them. It’s very intuitive from now on – What you’re doing here is installing the extension then downloading the part of it that blocks the Facebook ads. This app works within Facebook but doesn’t require your password to work. It’s all free, too. Did we mention that yet? Everything is free here on Computers Made Simple, right?
TIP: Close then reopen Chrome. The instructions for the extension don’t tell you to do this but it won’t block any ads until you do.
5. Before AdBlock Plus – Here is a snippet of what we get on our Facebook pages every day:
Lots of ads, soon to be zapped by AdBlock Plus.
6. After – Get ready for a neat and clean Facebook page:
All gone, for the most part anyway.
7. This extension offers three levels of ‘cleansing’:
We still get suggestions so something isn’t working right but, hey, the big ads are gone!
8. Turn it on or turn it off: Up on the top right, one or two icons left of the three bars we click on before, you’ll see what looks like a stop sign with the letters ABP in the middle of it. Click that to turn AdBlock Plus on or off.
ABP is off.
AdBlock Plus is on.
We just found this app this morning so it’s new to us, same as it is to you. If we notice things that aren’t going smoothly with it, we’ll update this but, for now anyway, it seems to be working fine. How long will it work? We have no way of knowing. We do know that AdBlock has tried to initiate discussions with Twitter and now may do the same with Facebook , trying to get them to join its ‘acceptable ad’ initiative. You can read about all of this here:
Let us know what you think of all this or, better yet, suggest some things that are troubling you about Facebook, technology or the Internet in general. We love comments and questions.
Facebook needs to change in order to remain popular…and current.
Facebook’s popularity is fading fast, at least that’s what the media would have us believe. We tend to agree, basically because we don’t see a whole lot of activity there these days. Except for fan pages, it seems that anyone who wanted to join up has already done so. Fan pages abound, and yes we have one, but we don’t see a huge increase in the numbers of personal profiles. What will Facebook look like in ten years? We don’t have any idea but if it’s going to even exist at that time, here’s some changes they could make.
1. Allow private messages on posts – Renren.com, the Chinese version of Facebook, lets users make private comments on anything that anyone else posts. When you say something on Facebook, the world sees it. You’d think that China, because of its supposed personal restrictions wouldn’t offer something like this but they do.
2. Get rid of some of the ads – Facebook has sold out, in our opinion, forcing ads on their users. Not only do we see them on the sidebar, which we’re used to, we now see them in the middle of our newsfeed. Hell, we even see suggested ads, as if we’d shout, “Yeah Facebook! That’s a cool Buick ad right in the middle of my Timeline!”
3. Stop asking for personal information – We know where we live, where we went to school, where we work or used to work…why is that important to Facebook? The tendency now is to simply lie about all of this. Why not? It’s not as if we’re going to get something out of revealing our private information, right? Facebook gets something out of it, not its users.
4. Let us like something but don’t tell the world about it – This one change would mean the world to almost every Facebook user. Liking a photo or a comment isn’t always something we want to share, is it? As long as the original poster knows we like something, why does every single person who can see that post have to know? Can you imagine how this affects teens? High school is tough enough without the added pressure of everyone knowing that someone liked someone’s photo.
5. Stop with the repetition of posts – There is no reason to repeat the same post endlessly in the newsfeed, is there? We get a notice if there is activity on something that we’ve interacted with so why does Facebook persist in showing us the same post ten times or more as we scroll down the newsfeed? Sure, we can hide the story but why do we have to interact with something we don’t want to see anyway. (We actually know why this is. Facebook is logging our ‘hides’ in order to tune the different types of ads that they put on our main page.)
Last but not least, and it’s not one of the five main points that we’d like to see changed, but Facebook does need a thumbs down icon, don’t you think? Not ‘liking’ something is not the same as ‘not liking’ it. We’ve all seen comments and opinions that we really disagree with so let us, darn it!
OK, that’s our list, what’s yours? Maybe we missed some key things here. Let us know. Better yet, let us know on your very own Facebook page. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook
Almost everyone, unless they’ve been living in a cave, knows about Facebook. Twitter, on the other hand, isn’t quite as popular, depending on which age demographic you’re talking about. Teens seem to have left Facebook in droves, choosing Twitter instead. Why is this? In this post we’ll give you some of our ideas on why this is happening.
Rihanna is constantly getting into trouble over her tweets but…that’s the beauty of it. She’s honest and doesn’t hold back.
Facebook Pros:
1. You can keep in touch with family and friends easily and quickly.
2. Posting photos is easy.
3. Comments and status updates keep others up to date on what you do.
4. If you choose to, you can keep most things private.
Facebook Cons:
1. It’s difficult to get the inside scoop on popular sports, entertainment and music stars.
2. Star’s pages are often not controlled by these stars. They hire other people to write the content. Some are not even affiliated with the stars.
3. It’s hard to mix politics, news and entertainment with friends and family. Sharing these things can lead to conflicts at home or at work.
4. It’s too easy to share everything about your life, including many things that you, perhaps, shouldn’t share.
5. It’s very difficult to maintain your privacy since these settings are always changing.
6. Facebook uses ads to make money.
That’s a basic run-down of the things that we see as detrimental to the Facebook experience. This particular social media has changed over the years and the Facebook you see now is nothing like it was when it started out. While the older generation’s interest in Facebook has increased, the younger generation has moved on to Twitter.
As far as NASCAR goes, every team and every driver seems to use Twitter.
Twitter Pros:
1. Twitter is instantaneous. What you see in the feed is brand new, for the most part. Anything that is older is usually marked as such. There are even sites that tell you if what you’re posting has been posted before. This keeps it current.
2. You can see what’s popular at this moment in the world, in your country or in your city. This is called ‘trending’. If something happens, it becomes a hot topic and starts to trend.
3. Twitter is words not pictures. You have to read to use it. There are reports that user’s literacy will increase, simply because they are reading tweets as opposed to looking at pictures.
4. Most popular users, big stars from every part of the sports and entertainment world, almost always post their own thoughts and opinions. This alone makes Twitter vastly superior to Facebook. If you want the inside scoop on anything to do with your ‘fave’ stars, Twitter is the place to be. Some stars get into trouble by being too honest but, love them or hate them, that’s something you don’t get on Facebook.
5. You can speak directly to people. Try that on Facebook! Your tweets to popular Twitter users, from every walk of life, can be read by those people and their followers. Your audience is immediately larger than you ever thought possible. Tweet to Justin Bieber, for instance, and there is a possible audience of over 45 million people.
6. Nothing about Twitter is complicated. You think up a tweet, keep it to 140 characters or less and post it. Sure, there are some simple things to learn, things such as hashtags for instance, but the learning curve is almost perfectly flat, nothing tough here.
Twitter Cons:
1. It’s addicting. Following the feed can take up a lot of time, specially if something is happening in the world of the people you follow. Take NASCAR, for instance. Tweets during a race can flow almost as fast as the race itself. In a situation where the cars are stopped, for an accident let’s say, some drivers actually tweet from their cars. This should be in the plus side of things but you can see how addicting this might be.
2. It’s difficult sometimes to sort out your interests. Tweets come through in a big jumble which makes following a story fairly difficult. There are lists, however, which make this process much easier.
3. Trimming your words to 140 characters or less can be very difficult. The plus side of this is that you can develop the skills needed to get your point across in as few words as possible. Think of this as the haiku section of social media.
There you have it, a rundown of why we think Twitter is a bit more fun than Facebook. There are ways of sharing photos, too, in case that is your main concern. We’ll do a series of posts on Twitter this week to help you sort it all out. Stay tuned!
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a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
