Tech : 'uProtect.it' App Hides Your Facebook Comments From Facebook

Facebook's customizable privacy settings may allow users to hide their comments from co-workers and ex-boyfriends, but a new tool called uProtect.it can conceal them from a much more ubiquitous observer: Facebook itself.

Developed by Reputation.com, Inc., uProtect.it is a free app that encrypts all comments posted across Facebook, rendering them visible only to a select group of friends. After downloading the app and activating it with a bookmark, users can write any comment, and decide which friends should have access to it. Once posted to Facebook, the comment will appear as a standardized message from uProtect.it, along with a link to the encrypted post. However, only pre-selected friends will be able to actually see the comment after clicking the link. Everyone else, including Facebook, will be left in the dark.

Unfortunately, this added level of privacy seems to come at the expense of convenience. Users must sign into the service each time they want to read their friends' encrypted messages, and must click a separate link to read each message. The process may not be as smooth as, say, scrolling through your friends' Walls or mini-feeds, but Reputation.com founder Michael Fertik says the tool provides a rare opportunity for Facebook users to share information with each other without having to worry about anyone looking over their shoulders.

"Essentially you're creating an encrypted atmosphere on Facebook, and Facebook can't control it," Fertik told the Wall Street Journal. The only caveat, of course, is that Reputation.com does control it. Like many other Facebook apps, uProtect.it accesses some of the personal information you store on the social network, including your photos and friends lists. And all those encrypted conversations and comment threads eventually end up on Reputation.com's servers.

But the company insists that it doesn't share or sell stored user data with anyone else, because doing so, apparently, would run counter to everything that uProtect.it stands for -- namely, online privacy. "Every day the crescendo of demand for privacy is growing," Fertik explained. "People are talking more seriously about privacy. I don't want to miss that window."