How to prevent your friends from stalking you via Facebook games

Do you love your Facebook games, but still feel terribly ashamed for enjoying them? Would you rather people not see you've been logging into FarmVille every two hours to harvest your raspberries? Or how about that time you said you couldn't pick up the phone because you were in the shower, but really, you were glued to a 60-second round of Bejeweled Blitz? And of course, unless your computer is waterproof, there's no explaining to everyone why Facebook says otherwise. And Facebook will say otherwise, cause it knows your every gaming move.

So how do you get Facebook to quit tattling? Here's three things below that you can do:

1) One surefire way to get Facebook games from ever bothering you again without leaving Facebook is to turn off all apps. You can do that by logging into Facebook and clicking here.

2) If you want to stop a single game from sending out information about you, but you don't want to remove it outright, then another method is to head to Application Settings, select the game from the list, click on the word "edit" on the right side, look at the bottom for "App Privacy", and then choose a security setting from the tabbed list on the right. If you choose "Customize" from that list, you'll get the option to make the game viewable to "Only Me" or to even block certain people from seeing that you're using the game.

3) Finally, we come to the spankin' new, never-before-seen Facebook games ticker. For some people, this ticker is a godsend. For others, the ticker represents social gaming stalker central. However you feel about it, there's a way to stop the ticker from telling everyone what you're playing and when you've played it.

To do that, just hover your mouse over your status in the ticker, which should cause a little "x" box to appear. Clicking on it gives you the following options: "Remove this post", "Don't publish 'is playing . . . ' posts", and "Edit app settings". You're going to want the second option if you want the game to stop notifying people of your playtime via the ticker.

And now you're good to go!

Since its inception, the Facebook App/Games Ticker has inspired plenty of love and hate. Which camp do you fall into and why? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment