Mark Pack

Prompted by a tweet from Owen Blacker (@owenblacker) about his Twitter settings, I’ve taken a look at what external applications I’ve let access my Twitter, Facebook and Flickr data. Put like that, this sounds like a boring techie configuration question, but it really amounts to, “Who’ve I given rights to poke around my personal data?”

Over time, it’s easy to build up quite a large list of such applications, not all the members of which are necessarily wise choices – especially as the way applications behave can change over time.

So if you’re in the mood for some prudent house clearing, here is what to do:

Twitter: Go to http://twitter.com/account/connections. You’ll be prompted to login if you aren’t already logged in. You can then see all the applications granted access to your Twitter account and remove any that are not needed. Clicking on the name of the application will take you to more detail about it.

Facebook: Log in to Facebook. Click on Settings (top right) and then Application Settings. The drop down list in the top right defaults to only showing recently used applications, so if you want to clear out old items that are not needed select Authorised.

For each application, the Application Profile link takes you to more information, Edit Settings lets you fine tune details or the cross lets you remove its permissions (for an external service) or the application itself (for a Facebook application). Some Facebook applications are built-in and can’t be removed, but you can still tweak the details of their permissions.

Flickr: Log in to Flickr. Click on You at the top and then Your account. Now you want Extending Flickr and in the Accounts Links section will be the applications to which you’ve granted rights to access your Flickr data. Edit will show you the details and give the option to remove that permission.

Got any other suggestions to add to the list? Pop them in the comments below.