With free or paid apps and some websites, there’s a delicate balance between enjoying the application and protecting your privacy. Technology for real estate practitioners has exploded with hundreds of cool apps and devices within the last 5 years.
For most successful real estate professionals, social media is not an option; it’s a key strategic marketing tool and an efficient way to connect with your sphere of influence.
Have you ever downloaded a free app or visited a site that offered to allow access via your Facebook login? Happens all the time, right? Your login gives that entity access to your Facebook profile. It allows them to park inside your Facebook account, harvesting your information for years or decades, until you eject them. Years of your info can be mined and sold as the result of one login.
Here’s a quick way to find out which apps are tracking you, what info they are collecting and how to stop them.
To see which apps are tracking you:
- Open your Facebook page, click on the settings icon at the top and far right of your screen. From the drop-down menu select “settings”.
- Locate and click the “Apps “ icon inside the settings menu . (Usually on the left of the screen.)
- Notice the resulting list of apps that are “signed into your account”.
- At the bottom of the list notice and click the “Show All Apps” link. This will reveal the remainder of the list of apps that are tracking you.
- To the right of each app’s name, there is an “edit” function and an “X” mark.
- Click on the edit function to see what the app knows about you. Adjacent to the “Your basic info (?) “ bullet point, click the question mark to learn more details about data points being shared.
- I learned that the first app I clicked has my email address, profile picture, gender, user ID, list of friends, and “any other information which is rated public.”
- I noticed these statements, “ This app may post on your behalf, including status updates, photos and more. This app can also access posts in your News Feed.”
- Check the settings for each app and modify any unwanted access by clicking the edit function to limit access or click the “X” icon to end the app’s access to your account. The app may stop working for you; so weigh your options prior to making your edits.
Hopefully this article will help users to strike the perfect balance between enjoying your favorite apps and protecting your privacy.
For more information or detailed screen shots of the instructions above, check out a great article from Business Insider, written by Jim Edwards.
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