Facebook, for quite a while now, has been sharing our personal information across the web. It’s all about marketing and who owns the demographics. Does it jeopardize your identity? Yes – it does. Can you stop it? Not really. You can spend your life blocking the multitude of applications that want your personal information. Can you opt out later or take them to court? Sure. Good luck with that.
WIth YELP hooked into Facebook, you can see whose looking at what, what they “Like”, and what they’re doing on the Yelp site. Some of you might like that. If you own a business it might be good for your business.
Personally, I don’t want to publish what I am buying or reviewing or website I am visiting. To me; that’s private information …
To change application privacy settings on Facebook:
- Choose ACCOUNT > PRIVACY SETTINGS
- Under “Apps and Websites” near the bottom of the page, choose EDIT YOUR SETTINGS
- Under “Apps you use” click EDIT SETTINGS
- Scroll down until you find the YELP application (or any other application you want to block)
- Choose EDIT SETTINGS (again)
- Choose REMOVE APP to block the application *or* turn off the various optional settings
- The system pops up a confirmation message; choose Okay to continue
- If it prompts you again, choose Okay again
Unfortunately, you have to do each application individually. The alternative is to turn off all Facebook apps; which is probably not something you want to do because it will prevent you from posting photos, links, and reading your horoscope or other things of that nature.