Put your mouse on the “Settings” button in the top blue bar, towards the right side.

You do not need to click this button/link, there will be a drop down menu like below. Click the “Application Settings” link.

You will see the most recent applications, and a drop down menu to select more views.

Select “Allowed to Post” from the list. 

You will see a list of applications that are allowed to post updates to your stream, without asking for your permission. Prepare to be surprised, I keep checking this portion and still didn’t know that I had one other application that could post without prompting! Go ahead and click “Edit Settings” for the applications that should not post updates without Prompting.

  You need to change the “Additional Permissions” for the application.

Revoke the “Additional Permissions” and you are good to go.

You can revoke the additional permissions from all the applications that you do not use, or you do not want to allow to post to your streams. I know of people who allowed over 300 applications to post without prompting. This meant that anything that they did on Facebook, or even their desktop in some cases, was available for the entire world to see, without their knowledge.

Protect yourself. Start now!

When you are playing the game, there is a time when the game asks you for special permissions. We do not read the fine print and accept whatever is asked for. This is where the problem starts. With Farmville, the problem begins when one takes a Picture.

Here is a sample of what happens.

When we take a picture, the Farmville asks for special permissions. If you allow Farmville to allow publishing automatically, you will not be asked for permission in future before posting anything in your update stream. For people who spend quite a lot of time on Farmville (or even other games), this could mean filling their streams with updates of ribbons, like below. You may not want everyone to know every time you spend time helping 5 friends, or you are a level up!

What are your options in such a case?

I will tell them to you in the next post, to avoid making this one unnecessarily lengthy.

Internet has made information so accessible that if someone is looking for it, it is readily available at all times. Google has become a verb and life’s so easy with information a couple of clicks away, I wonder why did they have books in the first place! I realized in the past few weeks that it was much easier to find out what’s happening around you, by using twitter! For those who joined us late, Twitter is a website that lets users share 140 character messages with the entire world.

Unlike SMS, twitter is a broadcast service. SMS is meant for an intended list of recipients, while twitter messages are for everyone to see, making it public, and therefore social! It is funny the way the meaning and definition of ‘Social’ has changed. Anything, which is not private, can be considered Social. The more open you are, the more Social you are.

If you can share the dirtiest of your secrets in public, chances are that you will have a good fan following!

Websites like Facebook, MySpace etc have brought everything in the users’ life in public domain, all in the name of Social. It is easy for people to know things about others that otherwise would never be in the public domain.

What makes life worse is the number of companies that use the API of these Web Applications. In user language, these companies are providers of the numerous quizzes, cute quotes, comparison reports, photo tools, games and all that jazz on Facebook and MySpace.

People continuously add these applications, opening up their profiles to the providers, and also allowing the provider to access the information of all their friends.

This means that if I want to protect my profile from potential spammers, ID thieves or just want to keep my private life private, I will have to ask my friends to not use these applications. With the increasing number of people getting on to the Social Networks, it gets all the more difficult to keep a tab on how and where can your information be distributed. Currently, I do not know how many people read the TOS and Privacy Policy and all the other fine print of these applications. I think most people don’t even realize that these parts require any attention.

The next posts will have the details of protecting profiles in Facebook for a start.

Please protect yourself and help others.