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See which apps have access to your online profiles

With the MyPermissions app, you review and remove permissions of apps accessing Facebook, Twitter, Google and your personal information on other online accounts.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
Matt Elliott
2 min read

There are 70 apps accessing my Facebook account. I did not know that before I had MyPermissions scan my account. With this free app for iPhone or for Android, you can keep track of the apps that have access to your various online profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Dropbox, Instagram, Foursquare, and Flickr. The app doesn't do anything that you can't do directly on the permissions page of a given account, but it acts as a convenient dashboard to monitor and control which apps have access to your accounts.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

To check the permissions of one of your accounts, you must sign in to the account via MyPermissions. Right up front on the app's FAQ page, it states "we do not save any personally identifiable information, nor do we save your credentials or passwords." In fact, all the app is doing is passing your off to the permissions page of each of your online accounts. Sometimes this results in a less-than-ideal page layout on an iPhone (Twitter, for example), but it's still easy to go down the list and approve or revoke the permission of the apps accessing that account.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

The app was recently updated so that you receive alerts when a new app begins accessing one of your accounts. I've been using the app for a few days now, and I've not received any notifications. When I launch the app, however, it's easy to see how many apps are accessing each of my accounts and how many new apps are accessing my account. For each account listed, you'll see two buttons: Apps and Alerts. Tap the Apps button to go to the permissions page of a given account to see all of apps that have been granted permission to access it. Tap the Alerts button to get a pop-up window within the MyPermissions app to see the apps you've yet to review. If the entire list looks good, you'll find a convenient Trust All button at the bottom.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

For other online services beyond the eight the mobile app supports, check out the MyPermissions Web site, where you can scan Windows Live, LinkedIn, and more.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

(Via The Next Web)