Facebook privacy application manages who sees your posts
AVG announced its first privacy app built on the Facebook API, AVG CrowdControl. The app allows users to manage who sees their default posts for improved privacy without deleting personal contacts.
AVG CrowdControl is designed to make Facebook experiences safer by customizing who can view a status, videos and photos posted on a personal timeline. AVG’s goal is that this will make privacy and online security, a more front-of-mind issue for users. AVG CrowdControl also is integrated directly into AVG PrivacyFix.
“Most people have hundreds of friends on Facebook, but may not feel comfortable sharing their daily activity with such a large group, including old business colleagues, fellow students, or people who you can barely remember,” said Jim Brock, VP Privacy Products, AVG Technologies. “This is why we designed AVG CrowdControl. We believe that people will share more and have a more fulfilling experience on social networks when they know they are sharing only with the group that’s right for them.”
AVG CrowdControl scans the user’s Facebook profile and organizes their friends’ based on who they interact with most. Clicking on any friend’s image marks them to be excluded from the custom list.
Once this personalized list has been created, the app takes users to a guided screen showing them how to change the default setting and opens a new tab for them to change it – a simple two-click process.
As the app is integrated into users’ Facebook accounts, the list can be easily adjusted and kept up to date as new friends are added. When the user wants to share something more broadly, they can always select all Friends or Public as the audience for a specific post.
“As Facebook makes it easier for others to explore and find your information through tools like Graph Search, it’s more important than ever to manage the audience for your online life. AVG CrowdControl makes it quick and easy to get the defaults right.” Brock continued. “We understand from young people that it’s a bad move to un-friend people, but still they wanted to easily limit who sees their stuff on Facebook. It’s great to have lots of online friends; but it’s even better to have control what they can see about you.”