The Stupid Things You Do on Facebook (and How to Fix Them)

Reluctantly or otherwise, Facebook is the place most of us have chosen to share our lives online. In spite of its many useful features, the social media site can be a constant source of annoyance, embarrassment, and trouble if you make a few stupid decisions you might not even realize you're making. Fortunately, with a little effort, you can get Facebook under your control.

Stupid Thing #1: You Don't Regularly Audit Your Approved Apps

How many applications have you approved on Facebook? There are probably a few you don't even know about. When, for example, someone auto-shares an article through a news app (which has the potential to behilarious and embarrassing), you have to approve the app just to read that article. The same goes for answering survey questions, participating in games, and basically interacting with half the stuff your friends post to their news feeds.

The problem: Apps have a lot of access to your personal data. You don't know exactly what they're seeing or what they're doing with it, so it's important you audit your apps once a month to ensure you haven't inadvertently approved anything you don't want or forgotten about an app you don't use anymore.

The solution: Auditing is pretty easy to accomplish. To start, visit your app settings page and you'll be presented with a list of the apps you're supposedly using. Facebook attempts to order the apps by how recently you've authorized them, but in my experience it tends to get a few things wrong. Nonetheless, go through the list of apps and delete anything that you don't recognize or don't want anymore by clicking the X by its name. You'll also see an Edit link that will display detailed information about what the app can do, plus a few settings. If you want to restrict an app without deleting it, just click that Edit link and change what you want. Changes are saved as you make them, so you don't have to worry about saving.

Once you're done, your app list will be nice and tidy. Just make sure you mark a day on your calendar next month to do it again. You might be surprised by what you'll find.

If you're interested, read more here: http://lifehacker.com/5911639/the-stupid-things-you-do-on-facebook-and-how-to-fix-them