See what Facebook apps know about you -- and what to do about it

Amidst the fallout over Facebook and how it uses our data, there's an important thing to consider:  Facebook is free.  The reason? It's ad supported. It can send ads to users -- and users’ data to advertisers. 

But, with the unauthorized use of Facebook users’ data by the Trump campaign's consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, there's more concern about how data is mined and shared by companies.

We checked out some tips online how to delete these third-party apps and found instructions from Quartz.Com work well.   

You might be surprised at the long list of apps you have running, and what they know about you when you follow these steps.

HOW TO CLEAR APPS YOU CONNECTED

•    Go to www.facebook.com (it’s easier on a computer than a phone).
•    Click the little arrow all the way on the top right of the screen to pull up the Facebook menu and select Settings.
•    Look for the Apps button on the menu that pops up on your left. This page shows you how many third-party apps have access to some -- or all -- of your Facebook data.
•    Click "show all" - And you'll see all the apps you probably had no idea were attached to your account and getting information about your habits.

What sort of info? We opened a fun little quiz game called "What cereal are you?” to find it had access to: Public profile, relationship status, work history, education, hometown, religious and political views and more.

To remove it, click on the little X to delete any app you don’t want.

But notice something really important. When you opt to remove an app, you’ll see a box that pops up and says, “for details about removing this data, please contact the app.”  So basically Facebook is saying it's not their problem anymore; contact the app directly.

HOW TO CLEAR APPS YOU’RE CONNECTED TO BY YOUR FACEBOOK FRIENDS

That tells us about apps we installed. But the whole thing with the Cambridge Analytica debate is that apps our Facebook friends installed are seeing what we're doing.

Bu you can control that better too -- if you know where to go. There’s a sort of hidden menu you need to check:
•    Scroll below your list of apps and you’ll see a set of four grey boxes.
•    Click on the edit button on the “apps others use” box. You'll see what sort of information about you was being made available to apps your friends are using. 
•    Uncheck all the boxes and click save.

HOW TO CLEAR ALL CONNECTIONS TO THIRD-PARTY APPS ON FACEBOOK

One other thing you can do is go to “apps, websites, and plugins” and you can disable your connection with every add-on app.  But that means anything you use your Facebook info to log in with won't work, so keep that in mind.