One thing I do to help me being productive is to get out of my head everything that is not related to the actual task I’m doing. To do so, I’m using tools like Remember the Milk or my Google Calendar. In the latest, I also add tasks I need to do at a specific time or interval. Some of the tasks I added recently have been related to my social media accounts: every month, I’m taking five to ten minutes to review the access I gave to applications or sites to those accounts.
A better approach would be to remove access not needed anymore as soon as it’s the case, but I don’t always think about it, so it’s why I have a recurring calendar item for it. Think about all the websites or applications that ask you to get access to your Twitter or Facebook account as an example. If you are like me, you like to test new applications, subscribe to brand new websites, and play with hot stuff: you never know when something we’ll be useful (or when you’ll create a false need, haha). Most of the time, the application doesn’t do what I was expecting, is shitty or is something I don’t really need. Since I’m a fan of cleaning my online presences, I try to delete accounts I’m not using, but some can fall toughs the cracks. As I’m using my social media accounts, personally as professionally, I want to be sure that those are safe, and that no spammers, hackers or just services I don’t use anymore cannot send, delete or manage my account if I don’t want to. It’s so simple, as I said, once a month, I visit app settings’ page for Facebook, the Twitter applications settings page, the sharing & extending account page of Flickr, and the authorized applications’ page on LinkedIn.
In the future, I’ll add more accounts to that list, so I’ll be sure that all my accounts are as safe as they can be on the permissions’ side. I think you should do it to: start with that list, remove the one you don’t use, and add the one that wasn’t in my list. It won’t take you much time, and your account will be a bit safer. Are you doing this cleanup task once in a while? If not, will you do it? Are there any major sites I forgot in my short list? Share your thoughts.
