Remove Apps Associated With Your Facebook Account That You Are Not Using
If you’ve ever logged into a third-party app or website using your Facebook account, you should take a moment and update a few security settings.
Facebook recently discovered that apps that were uninstalled – either automatically after 90 days of inactivity or manually by the user themselves – can still access some of Facebook’s data. A Facebook blog bug report uses a concrete example of someone using a fitness app “to invite their friends from their hometown to workout, but we didn’t find out that some of their friends have been idle for months.” After that, the application could collect more data without user authorization, simply because it was used before.
While there is no malicious intent, such errors can lead to security problems. Luckily, Facebook fixed the problem immediately and found no evidence of a leak or mishandling of data, but now is a good time to remove any apps associated with your Facebook account that you no longer use, just in case.
How to disconnect third-party apps from your Facebook account
- Open the Facebook app on iOS or Android, or go to Facebook.com in a browser if you’re on a computer.
- Open the Settings menu, then scroll down and click / tap the “ Applications and Websites “. This opens up a new menu listing all third-party apps and websites that you sign into with Facebook or have shared with your Facebook account in some way.
- Uninstall any apps you no longer want to associate with your Facebook account (note: be sure to back up and / or delete any data from these apps / websites that you want to keep before disconnecting them from your Facebook account ).
- If you don’t see any apps in the list, it means that you’ve either never logged into a third-party app with Facebook, or enough time has passed for Facebook to remove them from your account for you (Facebook starts to automatically remove apps from the user’s account. if they have not been accessed for 90 days). Deleted / unrelated apps may still have previously collected data about you, but will not be able to track you after deletion.
The Apps & Websites menu also allows you to edit how your account interacts with third-party apps via Facebook by default.
Click the “Change” button under the panel “Apps, websites and games” or “Notice of games and applications” to enable / disable this function. Disabling apps, websites and games will also remove all external apps from your account. It also prevents you from sharing / rating content from other websites or platforms using Facebook’s built-in shortcuts, but it’s the best way to prevent other websites (and Facebook for that matter) from tracking your account activity.