Freebies and coupons available through Facebook are increasingly popular ways of promoting products. But they often require that you “allow” an application in order to access the form for the free sample request or coupon. So I want to show you how to remove that access, and why it’s usually safe to grant access in the first place.

Each application is slightly different, but you will see what type of access you are granting before you grant it. Personally I don’t have a problem with granting access to applications from brands and companies I’m familiar with because my Privacy Settings still apply and most applications never access any of my information (see below for an example of this). I’ve found that the applications that actually accessed my basic information were mostly sweepstakes entries on Facebook. I don’t recommend granting access to any and every application because some could be spammy (and there’s a way to report that to Facebook). I like to delete applications on a regular basis (about once a month) so that the access I’ve granted is only temporary.

Here’s my step-by-step guide (look for my yellow highlights):

Step 1: Go to your Facebook Account Page (look at the menu at the top right side)
Step 2: Click on Privacy Settings from the pull-down menu

Step 3: Look at the bottom left to click on Edit Your Settings under “Apps and Websites”Step 4: Click on Edit Settings to view all applications you’ve granted access to
Step 5: Click on an application to see what permissions you’ve granted it, and see when the last data access was (most never access data as highlighted in yellow below)
Step 6: Select Remove app to delete it (or just click the “X” in your list of applications)

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