Who Has Access to Your Social Media Accounts?

We’re quite good at keeping track of apps on our smartphones. But what about on our Facebook, Twitter or Google accounts? There are probably hundreds of applications that you granted access to your personal data, but then forgot all about.

Most of the apps we use are these one-hit wonders – after we install and use them for a few minutes, we tend to forget they exist. And most of the services bury the option to remove apps, leaving them to leak our personal data even when they’re not being used.

There’s one website, however, that makes managing these apps much easier: http://mypermissions.org/. Simply load up the page and click the service you use – be it Facebook, Twitter, Google – even Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram and Flickr are supported.

Each link takes your directly to that service’s App page, where you can see – and be surprised – at just how many apps you’ve got installed. Across the three major services, I was astonished to find my account had around 100 apps – many from years ago. (May I stress ‘had‘.)

Facebook actually shows the last time you used an app, listing old ones as “over six months” since their last use. Needless to say, this section is much bigger than you’d expect.

To remove apps from Facebook, just click the “X” by their name and choose remove.

Why Permissions Matter

It’s important to keep an eye on your apps because – especially on Facebook – the app developers gain full access to your personal data. If any of these developers have their databases hacked – and they’re smaller, less secure companies than Facebook itself – all of your personal data could be in the hands of hackers.

That would mean you’re ripe for a number of abuses, particular identity theft and fraud. Ouch.

Facebook Apps are the most risky, purely because there are too many for Facebook to screen effectively.

We’d recommend getting rid of everything not used for more than six months – why bother keeping it? Then look through the others more closely.

So how many apps do you have? Surprised?