SECURITY - PRIVACY - 12.11.2018

Don’t give access to your accounts just like that!

Give access to your e-mail?

Some services require full access to your e-mail account so that they can do all kinds of useful things with your messages. Examples are TripIt ( https://www.tripit.com ), which automatically creates your itinerary based on the reservation e-mails you receive for flights and hotels, or Unroll.Me ( https://unroll.me ), which lists all the subscription e-mails in your mailbox so that you can automatically unsubscribe from those you are no longer interested in.

This is convenient, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch - you’ll be giving these services permission to read and analyse your e-mails. Unroll.me, for one, sells (anonymised) data about the products that interest their users to advertising companies. If you don’t like such intrusiveness it’s better not to give access to your e-mail in the first place. In fact, we advise against giving access to your principal e-mail account as this account is where you will, for example, receive confirmation e-mails after changing your password on a website.

Who has access already?

It’s a good idea to check to whom you have already given access to your e-mail, and to revoke such access rights if you have any doubts.

For Gmail: https://myaccount.google.com/permissions

For Outlook.com: https://account.live.com/consent/Manage

These pages not only give you an overview of who has access to your e-mail but to the other services linked to your Google account, e.g. Google Drive, or your Microsoft account, e.g. OneDrive. Make sure you check who has access to these services as well.

Access to your social networks/cloud

There are lots of apps that want access to your social network or cloud storage. For example, you can give the Followers Insight app (Android) access to your Instagram account so that you can track your followers. Or you can give the Microsoft Word app (iOS and Android) access to your Dropbox account to open and edit files. You generally don’t have to reveal your username and password to these apps but only give them permission to do certain things (read only, write too, etc.) Note. If you are asked to give your username and password, be wary and preferably look for an alternative app.

Who has access already?

If you no longer trust or use an app, you will have to revoke its access rights manually. You can do so via a dedicated webpage on your social network or cloud storage:

For Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications

For Instagram: https://instagram.com/accounts/manage_access

For Twitter: https://twitter.com/settings/sessions

For LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/permitted-services

For Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/account#applications (tab “Connected apps”)

For other networks check the account management pages to see if they provide a list of connected apps.