Privacy Party - Find and fix social media privacy risks

Hi everyone, I’m Tracy, the founder and CEO of Block Party. We used to offer anti-harassment and blocking services for Twitter, but since Elon forced our product into early retirement, we’ve turned our attention to another part of the online safety puzzle: Protecting your privacy before you’re under attack, so (ideally) you never are. As an early adopter of social media, I posted freely and vigorously, not worrying about my privacy, figuring “security by obscurity” was good enough. But as my platform grew, I got unlucky with online stalkers, and suddenly I was nervous about every scrap of information I’d ever shared online. A Facebook profile photo taken in my neighborhood could identify where I lived. A Google review of a local coffee shop could tip off a dedicated sleuth that I was a regular. A triumphant cross-post to Twitter from Strava sharing my usual run route could make me an easy target during my fitness routine. Even without being specifically targeted, all of us face increasing risk as generative AI ushers in the next era of online attacks. Instead of someone merely stealing your photos for a catfish Instagram account, it’s deepfake porn. Instead of a forged email asking for money from your parents, it’s a synthetic voice made to sound like you, referencing hyper-specific details about your life, begging them to pay off the ransom for a kidnapping. There’s no way to stay entirely safe on the internet, but most people have stopped trying because it’s overwhelming or too much work. Pretending the risks do not exist, however, does not mean they have miraculously vanished! So Block Party set out to make it easy to identify potential privacy issues and fix them as quickly as possible. Privacy Party is a browser extension that will help you stop exposing sensitive info on social and reduce your risk of impersonation, phishing, harassment, and other online attacks. Here’s how it works: - The extension assesses your social accounts for potential vulnerabilities. - You get expert recommendations to improve your privacy and security. You decide what works best for you, and skip the rest. - Automations do the tedious work of clicking around, updating settings, and hiding old posts, so you don’t have to. To start, we’re offering recs for Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Venmo, with many more platforms on the roadmap. We’re excited to get your feedback on what we’ve built so far. One last thing: If you like Privacy Party, please pass it on! If not just to spread the good word (which of course we would appreciate, thank you), then because some of your biggest privacy risks may come from people around you posting things about you. Balancing the tradeoffs between sharing and staying safe on social can be tricky. We like to think of Privacy Party as a tool to help coach people to a safer approach to social. -Tracy

Really useful for managing the dozens of tiny confusing settings that each social media product uses to try and nudge me into oversharing. I thought I was pretty locked down, but Privacy Party found even more Instagram notifications for me to turn off, and some dodgy LinkedIn privacy options I hadn't even thought of.

I've worried about the risk of attacks online, especially with GenAI, but I haven't invested much in tooling to guarantee my safety. Mostly because it's so much work. Love the browser extension approach combined with automations/workflows.

Pretty useful! I would be looking for more security checks as well

The older I get the more privacy-conscious I become. I imagine this only grows for parents. Perhaps the largest benefit of Privacy Party is monitoring updates/new exposure as platforms make changes. E.g. Facebook has made numerous updates to their network design, sometimes exposing information from its users without their knowledge and unintentionally.

Helped me understand (and modify) the default setting on these products - for my own good!

LOVE LOVE LOVE <3

Nice! Do you plan to implement it for mobile?

I miss the days of the old internet; Where you could share more about yourself and not be judged, or stalked (as much). Now it's "I shared this here; Do I have a good enough reputation here so no one will try to hunt me down and ruin what little life I have?" Tools like Privacy Party help; My one caveat is that I do have to log into Chrome and log into my sites to use it, a few times a year or so, to check my settings. If it's available for Firefox, I would certainly 5 star it.

Oh my GOSH this is so needed! Given that our team has our own privacy-related launch next week I can't love enough that this space is getting the love and needed attention that it deserves. Congratulations on your launch and thank you for adding a ton of value to the privacy space!

It's just too hard to track and update privacy settings as an individual. I'm so glad to have an expert reviewing it for me and making it so much easier to change. Thank you!!

Do you, like me, use many social media platforms? Do you know how your privacy is being abused? Enter, Privacy Party — allowing users to manage privacy settings across every social platform. Don't wait, head off now and get that browser extension that finds and fixes privacy risks. /ht @triketora

Fantastic to see this!