Thursday, June 17, 2010

Taking Quizzes on Facebook? You are Sharing Your Entire Profile to Strangers!

There are so many common quizzes on Facebook, I believe most facebook users have taken few of them getting results for fun. But what you don't realize is you are sharing your entire profile to the stranger who wrote the quiz even if your Facebook profile sets to "private". The quiz developers could even collect your friends' personal information! That means when your friends take the quizzes, the quiz makers get access to your profile information as well! Isn't it scary?

Facebook's default privacy settings don't prevent any application developers from scouring your information. The only way to protect yourself is to take control of your information. First, you can remove the applications you don't use anymore. And here is how you change the privacy settings for applications and websites:

1. Log in Facebook, go to Privacy Settings page

2. On the bottom of the page, you can see "Applications and Websites". Click "Edit your settings".

3. Look for "Info accessible though your friends" and uncheck what information you are not willing to share to applications.

4. Look for "Instant Personalization" and uncheck the box beside to "Enable instant personalization". It prevent Facebook's current partners like Microsoft, Yelp from receiving your information.

5. Or you can turn off the entire application platform.

Facebook just announced the new privacy policy, and also promised that they will continue to adjust the it. I believe it will get better in the future!

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