MyPermissions: Clean Your Social App Permissions in 2 Minutes or Less

Do you have a Facebook, Twitter or Google+ profile? Do you know who can access your private, personal information for these accounts? You may be surprised.

Even with a good privacy system, you may forget who has your personal data through permissions and privileges you granted them. MyPermissions, a nifty online tool, makes it easy to manage your social media app permissions from one central location.

MyPermissions was created by Avi Charkham, an Israeli entrepreneur who co-founded Familio. It is basically a simple bookmark to the permissions pages of twelve major social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, Flickr, Foursquare, Windows Live, AOL and Familio.

Appropriately, the free tool does not require access to any of your social services. It does offer a monthly email reminder to check your app permissions through an If This Then That (IFTTT) automation service "recipe."

It's a good idea to periodically evaluate your social media accounts and clean up your app permissions. MyPermissions makes the job a little easier. It lets you adjust the permission and privacy settings for the top social media services. Most people can finish the task in two minutes or less.

The MyPermissions website has received comments from more than 380 users. Most comments are along the lines of "A brilliant tool," "I didn't realize how much stuff I was linked to," and "I don't remember installing half those apps."

MyPermissions will not automatically remove an application's access to your account. It merely cuts through the tangled layers and links that hinder navigation through your privacy settings. Once you identify the permissions you granted to a particular service, you can decide whether or not to revoke those privileges.

With so many sites requesting permissions, discernment is important before you install an application. Always examine the permissions before downloading an app, and never install one that makes you uncomfortable about sharing your personal information.

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• Kessler, Sarah. (January 4, 2012) "Have 2 Minutes? Check Out who has Access to Your Social Media Accounts." Mashable. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
• Liebowitz, Matt. (January 6, 2012) "New Website Finds and Fixes all Your Privacy Settings." MSNBC. Retrieved January 12, 2012.
• Pinola, Melanie. (January 3, 2012) "One Convenient Place to Start Cleaning Up Your Apps Permissions." Lifehacker. Retrieved January 11, 2012.

Copyright © 2012. Annette R. Smith. All rights reserved.

Published: January 11, 2012 / Modified: March 26, 2013.

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