Help! My Onlife Life Is Out of Control!

From www.makeuseof.com

Do you ever feel like your online life is spinning out of control?  Are your emails forming an endless conga line of chaos while your true agenda lies somewhere lost in the frenzy?  Do you receive a multitude of unwelcome advertisements which seem to appear right after you've signed up for a new social media account or downloaded a new app?  Do you ever feel shocked when you look up at the clock and it's 3:00 A.M. when all you planned on doing was surfing the Net for "just a few minutes"?  If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, then you just might be in danger of losing control of your online life.  Luckily, this MakeUseOf article by Nancy Messieh, "4 Handy Services to Get Your Online Life Under Control", offers several ways you can take back control. 

Messieh highlights the following four services to help you regain control of your online life:

Notification Control

Tidy up your email notifications in one minute with this free service!  Click here to learn more.

MyPermissions

Avi Charkham, the Founder of MyPermissions, explains it best:  "Privacy is no longer about protecting your personal computer!  It's about controlling who has permissions to access your personal information on the web."  Every time you sign up with websites and apps, you are allowing "them permissions to access your personal info."  While it's remarkably easy to share your permissions (most often without even realizing it), removing access to your permissions can actually be quite difficult.

This is where MyPermissions comes in!  As Messieh explains, "you can use the service to figure out which third party services have access to your social media accounts."  Click here to learn more. 

*Please note:  This is not a free service!

Unroll.me

Now here is an excellent free service for managing your out of control inbox!  As Messieh points out, Unroll.me makes it especially easy to "unsubscribe from" all those unread newsletters by pooling them all together "in one place."  Click here to learn more. 

*Please note:  According to Messieh, "At the moment, Unroll.me only works with Gmail and Google Apps email accounts."  Also, you must "grant it access to your email account", but as Messieh points out, "...with a service like MyPermissions, it's easy to simply revoke access..." later. 

Rescue Time

Rescue yourself from the pitfalls of online time wasters!  RescueTime tracks your virtual time and allows you to graph your online efficiency.  Available for both Windows and Mac, RescueTime offers both a free service, as well as a paid option with extra features.  Click here to learn more. 

*Please note:  As Messieh points out, utilizing RescueTime will allow "third party service access to all of your activity" online.  It is highly encouraged that you review RescueTime's privacy policy before you begin using the service.

                                             -Kerry Vash, Online Librarian, Blog Co-editor -