WASHINGTON – Social media companies make it easy to share with friends. But the information users provide is often passed on by websites to data-collecting companies.
Researchers recently found that more than 20 percent of the 10,000 most popular websites have a Facebook widget. Twitter’s “tweet” button can be found on 7 percent of those top sites.
Frustrated users who want to protect the information they post now have options to regain control of their information.
this week released a widget-scrubbing tool that monitors how tight a user’s privacy settings are and gives the option of disabling share buttons. In the first 24 hours that it was available, roughly 50,000 people signed up, according to .
, another available tool for social media website users, lets people see how many companies are tracking them on every website they visit on Chrome.
Â鶹¹ÙÍø’s Randi Martin contributed to this report. Follow on Twitter.
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