McAfee announced the availability of a free public beta of McAfee Social Protection, a new app for Facebook that protects users’ photos from being shared without their permission.

Offered as a Facebook app together with a browser plug-in, McAfee Social Protection lets users select which friends have access to their photos and makes pictures appear blurry to everyone else. For selected friends, the photos will be displayed properly once those friends have installed the app, creating a second layer of protection.

McAfee Social Protection gives users a safe platform to share photos without having to worry about them going viral or being uploaded onto the Internet by someone else. Only friends who have been granted access can view photos, but even they are unable to share, copy, print, or take screenshots of them. Those that have not been granted access will not be able to view the photos at all.

“As consumers continue to share more of their lives online through the photos they post to Facebook, they become increasingly vulnerable to the privacy pitfalls associated with not being able to fully control where their photos end up,” said Brian Foster, senior vice president of consumer product management for McAfee. “McAfee Social Protection helps to further underscore our commitment to safeguarding consumer’s safety, data and identities online.”

McAfee Social Protection prevents anyone from capturing a screenshot of your image; instead, the screen capture tool will only record a blank space. The app also disables the save and download feature, displaying a padlock icon over the picture when a user scrolls over it. This lock feature is possible because when users upload protected photos through the app, those files go onto McAfee, rather than Facebook servers.

McAfee Social Protection is available as a Facebook app and browser plug-in for PCs using Internet Explorer 8 or higher and Firefox 8 and higher. As a collaboration between Intel and McAfee, the app was developed by Intel's Software and Services Group.