Lockdown Facebook Photo Albums: Hands-on with McAfee Social Protection App

29.08.2012

Once you're past this second set of permissions, you can start uploading photos. While your photos are uploading, you can create a new album, choose who can see the album, and choose who to hide it from. Your options for who can see the album include "Friends," "Specific People or Lists," and "Only me." If you choose "Specific People or Lists," you'll need to type in the names of the lists or people.

Though the photos you upload to McAfee Social Protection are not technically uploaded to Facebook -- they're stored on a secure McAfee/Intel server -- you will see new albums pop up in your Facebook photos. Your friends will also see these albums, but they will only be able to see fuzzy versions of the pictures unless they've been invited to view the album (and they have McAfee Social Protection Installed).

People who can see the pictures will not be able to take screenshots using the Print Screen button or the Windows Snipping Tool, thanks to McAfee's Photo Viewer software. The software grays out the screen when you try to take a screenshot.

McAfee points out that, while this will not stop a truly determined photo vandal from nabbing your pictures (after all, you can always use a physical camera or phone to actually snap a shot of the screen), it will help discourage sharing by creating a roadblock.

If you're one of those people who likes to upload photos to Facebook -- but you don't love the idea of your photos being out there forever -- you should check it out. Remember, this is the beta version, so there are some issues. Mainly, it only works on Windows 7, you must have the Aero theme turned on, and you can't delete any photos from the app (but you can delete photos from your Facebook photos page). McAfee says they're currently working on releasing a version for Mac OS X, but they don't know when it will be available.