Video Demo - How to Keep Your Facebook Friends from Undermining Your Privacy Settings

Posted by Scott Wright

You have probably spent some time going through your Facebook privacy settings - choosing who can see your posts, who can find you in a search, what information is visible on your profile. Good for you. But here is something most people do not know: even if your settings are locked down tight, your friends' applications can still access your data.

The Problem: Your Friends' Apps

When one of your Facebook friends installs an application - a quiz, a game, a "which celebrity are you" widget - that application can request access to information about the friend's contacts. That means your information. Your birthday, your email address, your likes, your relationship status, and more can all be pulled by an app that you never installed and never approved.

This is not a bug. It is how Facebook's platform works. Facebook gives application developers access to a user's social graph, and that includes data about their friends. The idea is that it makes apps more "social," but the practical effect is that your privacy settings only tell part of the story.

What Data Can Friends' Apps Access?

Under Facebook's current application platform, apps installed by your friends can potentially access:

• Your name and profile picture
• Your gender and networks
• Your list of friends
• Any profile information you have set to be visible to friends
• Your birthday, hometown, and current city
• Your likes and interests
• Your education and work history
• Your religious and political views

That is a lot of personal information flowing to applications you have never heard of.

How to Restrict It

Fortunately, Facebook does give you some control over this. Here is how to limit what your friends' applications can see about you:

1. Go to Settings in the top right of Facebook
2. Click on Privacy Settings
3. Find the Applications and Websites section at the bottom
4. Click Edit your settings
5. Look for "What your friends can share about you" (sometimes labeled "Info accessible through your friends")
6. Uncheck every single box

I recommend unchecking all of them. There is no good reason for a quiz app your friend installed to know your religious views or your birthday. Once you uncheck those boxes, friends' applications will only be able to see your name, profile picture, gender, and networks - the minimum that Facebook requires.

A Few More Tips

While you are in the application settings, take a look at the list of applications you have personally authorized. You might be surprised how many there are. Remove anything you do not recognize or no longer use. Every app you have authorized is another potential path for your data to leak.

Also, keep in mind that Facebook changes its privacy options frequently. Settings that exist today might be moved, renamed, or removed in the next update. It is a good idea to review your privacy settings every few months to make sure nothing has changed without your knowledge.

The video walkthrough above shows the entire process step by step. If you have questions or run into trouble finding the right settings, feel free to get in touch.