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Facebook lets you choose what to share with 3rd party apps

For ages, whenever you've wanted to use your Facebook credentials to log into a third party app like Foursquare or Candy Crush, you've had to give the app access to any and all data that FB has on you. There's simply been no way of choosing what information you can share--until now. Facebook announced last year that it would be implementing a new API this spring which allows the user, not the developer, to decide what sorts of private information each app is privy to. Well, that year is up and now whenever you "Log In Using Facebook," you'll be redirected to a landing page where you can select which individual data sets you want to share. Only want to tell Groupme your birthday and location? Done. Don't want to give Untappd access to your contacts? Easy.

There is one problem however: this only solves privacy issues moving forward. The apps that you've already shared info with still have all of it tucked away in a server somewhere. Sure, you could go into Facebook settings and remove the app's access to stop sharing new data with it but the dev still has all of your old data. You could of course always ask the dev directly to delete your data and I'm sure they'll get right on that. Or you can just take the hit to your online privacy (which, if we're being honest, you voluntarily gave up when you authorized these apps in the first place) and simply be more vigilant with what data you hand over to gain access to the newest iteration of Angry Birds.

[Image credit: laurentiu iordache / Alamy]