You may often choose Facebook to sign up for third-party applications, instead of your email address or signing up for a new account. Well, the recent Facebook data breach scandal tells you that Facebook allowed third parties to access user data without their consent, violating privacy and consent. While there is a huge uproar from digital rights activists, regulators, and legislators, the only priority left for the users is to protect their data through configuring their profile settings.
Over the weekend, it came to light that in 2014, a data analytics company, Cambridge Analytica received access to data of over 50 million users. The data was harvested, shared and stored without user consent. The unprecedented scale of violation refers to the social networking site’s terms of service and API structure at that time. This scandal is a reminder of the privacy violations that can unknowingly incur to users. Their personal information can be accessed, analyzed and shared with an array of marketers and businesses, by the very company which was trusted by the users with their information.
You may consider deleting Facebook, as tweeted by the WhatsApp co-founder, however, it cannot be a viable solution if you use your Facebook account to access third-party apps. For the moment, you can save your data from being accessed through Facebook’s API by taking control of your privacy settings. Before following the steps, you should that this will disable all platform apps. You will not be able to log into third-party sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Foodpanda, Patari etc. using your Facebook login. Here is how to do it:
Steo 1: Go to Settings > Apps
Step 2: Click the Edit button under Apps, Websites and Plugins
Step 3: Click Disable Platform
If you do not want to disable the platform, you can always limit the information third-party applications can access. Follow the simple steps:
Step 1: Go to Settings > Apps
Step 2: Click the Edit button under Apps Others Use
Step 3: Check the categories you do not want to be accessed and hit Save.
