Facebook is now adding apps from some of the sites you visit, right to your profile. The weird thing is they aren’t telling you that they are doing this. You have to go searching through your Facebook profile in order to find it.
It seems that Facebook is somehow able to track where you are going as long as you have not logged out, even if you don’t have a Facebook window open these apps can be added to your profile page. Not all sites are doing this but even one site is too many. According to Macworld “The sites currently leaving this trail all have Facebook integration, and the list includes heavyweights such as the Gawker network of blogs, the Washington Post, TechCrunch, CNET, New York Magazine, and formspring.me.”
While I was searching through Facebook, I could not find anywhere to opt out of this anywhere on the site. It’s not apparent what information is being exchanged between the sites and Facebook or how it’s going to be used.
How to find these secret apps
Recently I was looking through my Facebook profile and saw that one of the sites I visit quite regularly was also on my Facebook profile, but I hadn’t added it. I found Vocalpoint on my profile and I did not put it there.
In order to find out if you have secret apps on your profile you need to log into Facebook and click on “account” in the upper right hand corner of the page. Then click on “Application Settings” in the drop down menu. You will then be taken to a page that shows your recently used application settings.
How to get rid of these apps
The easiest way to get rid of these apps is to click the little ‘x’ on the right hand side of each app you don’t want. This will delete it. But if you visit the site again while logged into Facebook, it will be added again.
The best thing to do is to log out from Facebook each and every time you leave Facebook and are going to surf the web. This way Facebook will not be able to see where you are going and they won’t be able to add apps from the sites you have been to.
The bottom line is our privacy isn’t always private, especially when put on the internet. When companies like Facebook or Google change their settings unbeknownst to us, our privacy may be in jeopardy. When dealing with sensitive correspondence, pictures you’d rather not have everyone seeing, or posting’s on message boards. It’s always better to use a bit of caution as to what you put out there. Because the simple fact is, once it’s out there…it’s out there and we cannot count on the websites we visit to keep it completely confidential.
Sources:
http://www.macworld.com/article/151087/2010/05/facebook_addingapps.html
