‘Secu­ri­ty’ is the word on everyone’s lips at the moment, fol­low­ing Edward Snowden’s rev­e­la­tions of indis­crim­i­nate snoop­ing from the US and UK gov­ern­ments. The leaks have pro­vid­ed a reminder that com­pa­nies oper­at­ing online need to think seri­ous­ly about how secure their data is. That being the case, if you’re a social media man­ag­er, you’re sure to be inter­est­ed in soft­ware from start-up, MyPer­mis­sions, which offers a neat way to regain con­trol of your social media chan­nels and pre­vent online embarrassments.

What’s access­ing your accounts?

MyPer­mis­sions was found­ed 18 months ago after CEO, Olivi­er Amar, had his account hacked and found he couldn’t revoke the offend­ing app’s per­mis­sion to post in his name. In response, he cre­at­ed the soft­ware to help users con­trol who/what has access to their social media accounts. MyPer­mis­sions yes­ter­day extend­ed its full ser­vice to Twit­ter, mean­ing users will now be informed as to exact­ly what soft­ware and apps have per­mis­sion to access their account in real time.

In social media we trust

Trust is key when run­ning a busi­ness and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with cus­tomers. For this rea­son, the con­se­quences of a hack­ing inci­dent can be espe­cial­ly dam­ag­ing. A clear exam­ple of this was seen when the Asso­ci­at­ed Press’s stock fell by 1% after fake tweets about an explo­sion at the White House were sent from its account fol­low­ing a hack­ing. With 250,000 Twit­ter accounts also affect­ed by a Twit­ter hack­ing inci­dent ear­li­er this year, the need for busi­ness­es to pro­tect their accounts from mali­cious soft­ware and apps is stronger than ever before.

MyPer­mis­sions became an online suc­cess sto­ry after crowd fund­ing efforts saw it raise $1 mil­lion in seed fund­ing. It’s avail­able as a brows­er add on, and also on smart­phones. The soft­ware is designed to pre­vent embar­rass­ing inci­dents from occur­ring, by pro­vid­ing social media users with a sim­ple way to see and man­age which appli­ca­tions have access to their accounts. It also aims to pro­vide peace of mind for any­one who is rep­re­sent­ing their company’s image and brand through social media chan­nels, by allow­ing them to revoke per­mis­sions from shady apps. Of course, the soft­ware does not com­plete­ly pro­tect accounts from hack­ings, but it does rep­re­sent a step towards a more secure social media operation.