Do you know how secure your social network
settings are? Can you remember all the services and apps you opted in to
having access to your data? Security software maker AVG has a new and
free app called AVG PrivacyFix that helps you manage your privacy on
Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn.
AVG PrivacyFix is available on iPhone and Android, and it's also available as a desktop download for Mac and Windows PCs, which plugs into Firefox or Chrome to work.
When you start the app, you have to connect it to the services of
your choice (Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn are supported), and then a
dashboard displays a number of privacy settings and flags ones you
probably ought to review or update. It will tell you whether your
account is open on multiple devices, for example, or whether you have
facial recognition (face-tagging) enabled.
One neat feature is that it has a much better interface than
Facebook's own for creating a custom circle of people with whom you'll
share your Facebook updates and photos by default. AVG PrivacyFix
basically lets you deselect people whom you don't want included in this
group, rather than selecting one by one the people you do want.
It has push notifications, too, so that the app can alert you to new
privacy risks as they happen, as well as when policies change.
In the Google side of the dashboard, you can choose how much of your
data is saved, viewed, or blocked; whether your settings allow your
searches to be saved in your Google account; what happens with your
YouTube viewing history; and more.
The LinkedIn features, which also check how much of your account is
public and so forth, don't seem to be available on the mobile app at
this time, but are available in the browser version.
