Security and Your Facebook Linked Accounts

Many people use their Facebook account as a convenient way to log into a myriad of applications and websites. It's important to know who has access to your information and what exactly is being shared. This article reviews best practices regarding your linked Facebook applications and how to remove what you no longer need.

August 20, 2019
Valiant Technology
4 min

Convenience vs Security

As the amount of applications people use increased, password management has become a huge commodity. The are plenty of applications specifically for password management, but a trend has emerged for using your social media accounts to log into apps and/or websites. This grants companies access to your data in exchange for not having to remember another password. This may be a convenient login option, but it can also pose security risks.

What can you do to mitigate these risks and keep the convenience of one login? One good step it to review your connected applications fairly regularly and remove any you no longer require. Below we will demonstrate how to review and remove your Facebook linked accounts.

Reviewing your Facebook linked accounts

Start by logging into facebook on your web browser. (For the mobile application, the steps are the same, but the interface will obviously look different.)

In the upper right hand corner of your window, click the small triangle.

Click the indicated icon to access your Facebook settings.

This will open a drop down menu. Select settings.

Get access to account settings in the browser.

Your settings page will open. Your connected application settings have their own section closer to the bottom of the list on the left, so resist the urge to go straight to security settings, (but also please review your security settings another time!) Click “Apps and Websites”

You linked apps are under Apps and Websites, near Instant Games and Business Integrations.

From here you can view your active, expired and removed website and app logins. Active applications can make new requests for your information. Depending on what you share, they may still be retrieving more information about you through this link.

An example of active applications with Facebook logins.

As a security measure, Facebook will expire access to your information if you do not use this login for some time. These companies will not receive new information from the time of expiration, but still may have access to any data sent prior to expiration.

Expired applications can help limit what information is sent, but access is still allowed until that expiration date.

To view and edit what information and app has or had access to, just double click on the app. The information will appear in a pop-up window.

View and edit application access

When active, they always have access to some data, as Name and profile picture is required.

Facebook does not have access to how the app will use your info, and you have to contact the other company directly for that information.

There are a lot of options to toggle such as access to your friends list, email address, and who of Facebook can see that you use that application. Change your settings to keep as much information private as you want.

You can also set general application perferences to apply to active apps, and new apps you grant access to moving forward. Review these options as well so save yourself time in the future.

Removing applications

If you want to remove linked applications from your Facebook entirely, start at the Active apps page. Check the small box next to any and all applications you wish to remove.

You can select multiple apps and/or websites to perform a mass removal.

A pop up will ask if you are sure you want to remove this application. Keep in mind that any information already sent to the company may still be in their possession. They will just not be able to make any new inquiries or obtain new information through Facebook.

Click the bright blue button to remove this application.

The completed screen reminds you that the company for this application may have previously obtained information still.

Don’t stop there!

Review your other accounts that you may have used to access websites and applications. Log into your Google account and follow the steps in our article Security and your Google Linked Accounts.

Lastly, even though Facebook will set older linked accounts to expire, its a good idea to review this information preiodically. They will often add a message in your feed to review your security and access settings to make it simple to maintain your preferred level of privacy and sharing.