Cleaning Digital House

Hap­py New Year! Make any res­o­lu­tions? One of mine is to stream­line par­tic­i­pa­tion on cer­tain types of social media. In 2012, I don’t want to feel like I’m doing data entry when I’m try­ing out a new app; I want social shar­ing to be fun and open-ended.

I caught this link on The Verge yes­ter­day and took less than two min­utes revok­ing per­mis­sions across my pre­ferred social media plat­forms. Found ser­vices that I maybe used once in 2008 still had access to my info! Crazy, right? 

Part of not feel­ing like a data mule is know­ing what you’re shar­ing and with whom. Folks often think that cut­ting back on join­ing new ser­vices is what mat­ters, but think about all the ser­vices you grant access to your Twit­ter, Face­book and Google accounts. Go look and see for your­self. It’s a lit­tle scary.

Now, I love new toys as much as the next guy, but it’s impor­tant to be mind­ful of those per­mis­sions. I have no idea how many user agree­ments I’ve signed online, but I’m sure it’s too many. Stay on top of those items and you’ll do well to lead a clean­er life online in 2012.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to delet­ing noti­fi­ca­tion emails…