If you are a Facebook regular, chance is you have played around with some of the applications offered on the social networking sites.
This ranges from the overly popular Farmville game over greeting cards and quizzes, to fantasy football and business applications. Applications are everywhere and most users receive invitations regularly to get an app, or help out a fellow Facebook user in a game.
Until now, it was not possible to hide from friends that you are using an application on Facebook. That was a severe limitation for some Facebook users who would have preferred to hide the fact that an application is used by them. Does your mother really need to know what sex toy you are? Do you want to play a game in peace and not be bombarded by friends with requests for help?
Facebook Privacy Settings for Applications
Well, Facebook today announced a new feature that adds privacy settings for applications. This basically allows a Facebook user to select a specific privacy setting for applications.
The options range from limiting the application to selected friends, all friends, friends of friends, friends and networks, or anyone.
A lock will be displayed on pages that can be shared or published. Clicking that lock will display the list of available privacy options for that page.
These new controls give you the power to determine who sees the content you post to Facebook through any third-party application, whether it is on Facebook.com, your desktop, mobile phone, or from a Facebook Connect website or service. Seesmic, a desktop application from which you can view and update your News Feed, will soon offer extended privacy options so you can specify audiences for each update you make from the application, such as uploaded photos and status updates.
Applications on Facebook.com and external websites and services using Facebook Connect implementations have always respected your privacy based on what you’ve set in the “Posts by Me” setting on your Privacy Settings page. This setting will continue to be your default setting for all posts, and you can change it at any time.
Manage privacy for all Facebook apps
The new privacy settings make sense and will be useful to many Facebook members. You can check app settings and applications that you have installed on Facebook’s App Settings page: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications§ion=all
The privacy setting is displayed underneath each application on the linked page. You may edit it by hovering over an application and clicking on the edit button that appears.
This displays the “app visibility and post audience” which you use to change “who on Facebook can see that you use” the application. Additionally, it also reveals the information you provided the app with, and options to remove optional information.
Simply go through all apps listed on the page, and change the visibility accordingly. You may want to change the information you provide individual apps with at the same time while you are at it.