Over the course of your stay on Facebook, you've probably allowed a lot of apps to access a shocking amount of your personal information. The apps include everything ranging from Farmville to random quizzes you took five years ago. Now, you have a chance to delete all those all at once, thanks to Facebook's new feature that lets you bulk remove third-party apps. It also deletes all posts those apps may have published on your behalf, which will help in reducing the clutter on your timeline considerably.
The change is likely driven by the recent Cambridge Analytica events, that left the tech giant red-faced. Over the past few days, we've seen several changes made by Facebook to stymie the fallout from the fact that third-party developers have had unhindered access to Facebook users’ data, which they could use at whim, with little to no intervention from Facebook. The company confirmed the bulk removal option to TechCrunch today, so let's take a look at how it works.
Too little, too late?
Previously, one had to delete the apps one-by-one, rendering the whole process cumbersome, and often impossible for people who authorized every app that came their way. Now, when you go to the Apps portion of your Facebook settings, you can click on any number of third-party apps with direct access to your data and remove them en-masse. The changes appear to be a part of Facebook’s efforts to make app access easier to manage and understand, along with their decision to restrict the amount of user data developers could access.
Facebook also stated that it would automatically remove apps that haven't been accessed in over three months. Instead of taking Facebook's word for it, you can do it yourself by heading to your Facebook settings. The settings can be found by tapping on the downward-facing arrow tucked away at the upper right of the main desktop website. Mobile users have to tap on the three horizontal lines on the navigation bar at the bottom and scroll down to settings. From there, head to the Apps section.
Now, tap/click on the apps you’d like to disconnect and use the remove button at the top of the screen to complete the process. You’ll be given a prompt to delete all posts those apps may have posted to your timeline/profile.
Now, it's a matter of repeating the process for all apps you’d like to remove. If there are too many, Facebook will automatically remove them in three months unless you make use of it. We'd still recommend that you take the time to do it yourself.
If this isn't enough and you want to rid yourself of Facebook completely, here is how you go about it.
News Source: The Verge
