Your friends' applications are sucking your data!

Sounds like a long-winded B-grade horror movie title, doesn't it? Your friends' applications are sucking your data! But these third-party applications are very likely siphoning personal info from your profile, if you haven't adjusted privacy settings.

Confused? It's like this: each time your friends add an application, your info could be shared with developers whose applications you haven't even installed! This even extends to things like the type of relationship you're looking for, religious views, even your Wall!

Granted, not all these are on by default. But it shows how much Facebook developers can (and I hate this term but I'm going to use it) drill down to minute detail. Think of what marketers can do with this data!

To find out what info you're sharing, go to the Application Privacy page (under Privacy), and look at What Other Users Can See via the Facebook Platform. You can see a list of things that you can or can't share:

• 
  

• Share my name, networks, and list of friends, as well as the following information:

• Profile Picture
• Basic Info
• Personal info (activities, interests, etc.)
• Current location (i.e. town, city etc)
• Education history
• Employment history
• Profile status
• Wall
• Notes
• Groups I belong to

• Events I'm invited to
• My Photos
• Photos of me
• Relationship status
• Online presence
• What type of relationship I'm looking for
• Which gender I'm interested in
• Who I'm in a relationship with
• Religious views

• 
  

Tick or untick as appropriate. As you can see, you have no choice but to share your name, network and list of friends.

If you want absolutely nothing shared, then underneath this box, you may see "Do not share any information about me through the Facebook API". But very likely, if you've added any applications, this will be grayed out. Click on "Why can't I see this?" and you'll see this explanation:

You are unable to fully opt out of sharing information through Facebook Platform because you are currently using applications built on Platform. To enable this option, you need to remove any applications you have added, and remove your permissions to all external applications that you may have used.

Basically, this means you'll need to uninstall all the applications in order to turn off all sharing.

It's not just Facebook... applications know you, too!

This blog, and others, focuses on Facebook settings and how to make them work for you. But there are thousands of third-party Facebook applications out there (games, quizzes, photo sharing, review sites, maps... the list goes on) that make money from you.

They'll do so mainly either via affiliate links or straight ad revenue. What does this mean? Here are some real-life examples.

Affiliate revenue: Say you've installed an application that allows you to list the books you've read. If a visitor clicks on the book title, they'll be taken to an online bookstore where they can buy a copy. If the visitor goes through with the sale, the application developer, who has set up a deal with the bookstore, will get a cut.

Ad revenue: You might see Google ads at the end of a game. Click on an ad and the app maker will get a cut. Many websites, including this one, display similar ads.

Sometimes an application has no ad links and is a brand awareness exercise. The agency will want to convince their clients that the application is helping the brand name get across.

To measure the effectiveness of these campaigns, application developers need to be able to see demographic information about the people who use their tools. They can use analysis tools from companies like Refresh Analytics, who allow developers to get stats about people who add their programs. Refresh Analytics' tool is described thusly:

The tool can be easily integrated into any Facebook app. It tracks users across 13 demographic and six interest categories: geography, gender, age, marital status, music, books, etc. The info is collected in aggregate to protect user privacy and respect Facebook rules. A daily snapshot of 1,000 users is provided, and historical reports can be generated for the past month, six months or two years.

So, although personal information about you is never revealed, if you have included information about where you're from, your age, marital status and interests, all this information can, and does, get pulled out and it's able to be broken down by app makers so they know, say, the average age of the person who plays their games.

That's why I've not listed any interests or even my gender in my profile. I don't need the advertisers to know all this information if I don't have to reveal it.

They're still out there: Facebook Applications

The new-look Facebook does away with having to endure the tedious applications that plagued traditional profile layouts. In the past, you would see, quite literally in some cases, more than a hundred icons and boxes representing various apps that your friend may have added to their profile page. Now, all this crap is hidden behind a tab called Boxes, and under this tab you can choose to display chosen Applications or just access them via the Applications menu.

In 2007, the most popular apps included Scrabulous (the unofficial online version of Scrabble), and the ability to be bitten by a vampire. Flixster, Super Walls and slideshows were also the rage.

Although you may think your Applications are now gone for good, they've just been shoved under a mat and they do pop out from time to time. You will still need to make sure Applications like games don't harangue your friends every minute to try and beat your high score, or post updates to your profile every time you play. To do so:

Click Applications, located at the bar to the bottom of your screen, then Edit, to see a list of all your applications.

Next to the Application settings you want to view, click Edit.

For Geo Challenge, I see these options:

Allow Geo Challenge to publish one-line stories automatically, but prompt me for larger stories.

Prompt me before publishing any stories from Geo Challenge.

Never publish any stories from Geo Challenge.

Allow Geo Challenge to publish specific story sizes automatically without prompting.

Then there are the e-mail notifications. To adjust these, click Settings at the top of every Facebook page. Click Notifications, and right at the bottom, under Other Applications, you'll be able to select whether or not you want to be alerted on e-mail whenever something happens (whatever something is).