Doing a Facebook cleanup can help keep many annoying
things from popping up on your home page and in your timeline. With all of the
apps around and Facebook integration with so many apps, it really seems difficult
to keep things private anymore. Doing a Facebook cleanup can really help you
combat this problem.
First let’s start off with friends. Some of you might be
friend happy, adding everyone and anyone, however you have to be cautious when
doing so. Especially if you have a lot of personal information listed in your About Me section, or love to post your current location.
Leaving all of your personal information could actually be
dangerous if you have a stalker of some sort. It also makes it easy for people to
target you for spamming or the annoyance of people adding you for games. Just
make sure
know the person before adding them. I know you might feel a little
better when you have more friends, but it is not worth it.
Unfriending
To clean up your friends you have to go to the friend's timeline.
On the top right you will see Friends, Message, and then a setting icon. Hover
over the Friends icon, you will see a pop up window appear. When this happens, the last option is to unfriend. Pretty simple!
The second things to clean up are apps. Apps include games, and
third party apps from various sources such as phones or web browser add-ons.
Game apps can be very annoying when you have them installed
as they will always be asking you for some type of request. Sometimes it might
be your friend's fault, however if you are not playing a game why not remove it.
Next are third party apps. Third party apps are freaking
everywhere, from websites to cell phones to desktop applications.
Sometimes it is very convenient to use your Facebook
Username and Password to log into a website, however as soon as you do this, any
information you post on that website will get posted on your timeline. If you
are looking to keep somethings private, you might be out of luck. Use your
email instead of your Facebook account when setting up a new account.
Phone apps link your applications on your phone to your
timeline as well. One example of this is Runkeeper. as soon as you get done with a
run, it will post it on your time line. In this circumstance it might
not bad, however if you are trying to keep things private, again you will have a
hard time doing so.
There are not a whole lot of desktop apps that link to
Facebook, however there are a lot of browser add-ons that you may have given
permissions to. Chrome and Firefox have are notorious for having add-ons that grant them access to see your Facebook information.
Delete Facebook Apps
On the top right corner of either your home page or timeline, you will see your name, home, and settings tabs (the setting tab is an upside
down triangle). Select the settings tab and go down to account settings, then go to apps. You will notice all of your apps listed, here you can select edit and
remove or hit the x button to remove.
You might be surprised how many apps you have given permission
to over time. It might be easy to delete between 20 and 40 apps
that you have installed. Pretty crazy to think you may have that many apps
authorized to get information from your Facebook account.
Don’t freak out and think all of these apps use your
personal information in a bad way. In most cases you will be completely safe. The
same thing would apply to your friends. However again, be cautious if you add
everything and anything to your account. In these cases you might be setting you self-up
for potential risk.
Friends and apps are some of the main things to clean up, however also take a look at things you put a "like" to, and groups you may have signed up for. They are a little easier to clean up, so while your at it make sure to give them a look as well.
If you have any other
helpful Facebook tips please post them below.
