Lock Down Facebook and Google With AVG PrivacyFix App

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.

 

Source : http://goo.gl/cqYAE2