Privacy and social networking have never been a hotter topic, and discovering just how many apps have access to your various social networks can be a sobering thought, particularly as you’ll probably not remember half of them even exist, never mind that you signed up for them.

MyPermissions is a free browser add-in for Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari that allows you to review – and crucially edit – permissions for all the apps and services linked to a wide range of online accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, FourSquare, Windows Live, AOL and Flickr. More will no doubt follow in due course.

For now, the add-in automatically scans your Facebook apps and lists them along with their permissions, making it easy for you to edit individual permissions or remove unwanted apps with a single click (simply untick those apps you wish to keep before clicking the Remove button). Other buttons merely provide a link to the service’s own apps page where you can revoke access manually – you’ll either go directly to the page or be asked to log in first.

Better still, the add-in will also alert you via its status bar icon whenever an app from a supported service (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, Yahoo! or Dropbox) accesses your personal information, you know what’s going on and when.

Does it work? Yes it does, and by visiting the service’s FAQ page you can be reassured that you’re not trading one form of privacy compromise for another.

Note that this is the version for Internet Explorer.