The idea seems a bit strange at first. Why would you want to use social networks like Facebook, Gmail and Twitter anonymously? A new browser plug-in named Privly makes this possible. Privly is a new standard enabling users to take back control over their content on the social web. The browser add-on allows users to share information on any HTML site without actually putting the data on the host’s servers. For instance, if you send a tweet via Privly, the message is visible in the twitter stream as it normally would but the actual data is stored on a Privly server. That way, you stay in full control of your content: you can delete it, restrict access to it and keep it from being data mined.
 
Privly started as a pet project of Sean McGregor, a PhD student in machine learning, and four other computer scientists of Oregon State University. Now McGregor is lead developer of the open source project that is rapidly attracting more contributors as Privly gains momentum.