Ramblings of an Internetaholic

I highly doubt anyone reading this post would need to be introduced what Twitter is. Almost everyone has a twitter account these days though some people never use it. Anyways, this post is for the regular twitter users.

Part of the Twittering experience is using various twitter applications. I don’t exactly mean twitter clients here. There are loads of web applications for Twitter that do useful things like giving you conversation views, tree views or maybe giving you various statistics about your twitter usage. And there are some applications that are made just for fun. And some applications that might use your twitter account for their own purposes.

Most twitter web applications use OAuth to gain access into your twitter account instead of asking for your password. Twitter OAuth page displays a message asking you whether you want to allow this application access into your twitter account.

How many of you people actually read what’s in this screen before clicking on Allow? You’re granting some third party unlimited access to your twitter account here. It’s like giving someone else your password. Don’t you think you should pay a little more attention to what you’re doing?

Some applications once signed in to your twitter just do what they’re supposed to do. But the problem is some applications do somethings they’re not supposed to do. Once granted access these applications might spam into your twitter feed during regular intervals or even send direct messages to your followers with spam messages. If an application starts misbehaving in any way Twitter has given the option to revoke access to any application.

First you login to your Twitter web and go to the Settings page. Then click on the connections tab and you will get a page like the one below.

Displayed above are some of the applications I have granted access to my twitter account. If you want to remove any of the applications from having access into your twitter account then just click on the Revoke Access link below the Application name and that application will be removed.

I hope this post has helped some of you. Remember. Before you grant access to any application look around to see if it is trustworthy. Don’t grant access to everything that wants access into your twitter account. Safe Tweeting!