The Facebook Blog

Last month, we announced a number of changes to make privacy simpler and to give you more control over the information you share with other people. Today, we're taking the next step by providing more transparency and control over the information you share with third-party applications and websites with a new, simpler application authorization process.

The majority of people on Facebook actively interact with applications and Facebook-integrated websites every month. In order for these applications and websites to provide social and customized experiences, they need to know a little bit about you. We understand, however, that it's important that you also have control over what you're sharing. With this new authorization process, when you log into an application with your Facebook account, the application will only be able to access the public parts of your profile by default. To access the private sections of your profile, the application has to explicitly ask for your permission.

For example, JibJab is an interactive greeting card website that needs access to my photos and my friends' birthdays and photos so I can create personalized greeting cards. Based on the new model, JibJab must specifically ask for that information.

First announced in August 2009 as part of our work with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada, and introduced in April, this new permissions box will pop up whenever you install a new application or first log in to an external website with your Facebook account.

As before, all applications you authorize can access your basic information—your name, profile picture, gender and networks. This is information that is publicly available on Facebook to make it easy for your friends to find you, and in this case, to help you get started quickly with applications. You can always control which information you want to keep private through your privacy settings page, and you can remove applications from your application settings page at any time. You can also control which information your friends can share with the applications they use.

These improvements reflect two core Facebook beliefs: first, your data belongs to you; second, it should be easy to control what you share. If at any point you ask a developer to remove the data you've granted them access to, we require that that they delete this information. For more information, visit our Help Center.


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