Anti-social app, Cloak, helps you avoid running into your unwanted friends

CAN’T be bothered for a chat? There’s an app that helps avoid unwanted run-ins by warning if people you want to dodge are nearby.

The easy way to avoid the people you don’t want to see.

EVERY app out there is seemingly hell-bent on connecting us with everyone — friends, neighbours, co-workers, business associates.

But what about those people you’d rather keep at arm’s length? Enter Cloak, a new app available free on iPhones. Its goal is to disconnect you — to help you avoid unwanted human contact.

Cloak hooks into your social networks and mines geolocation data from check-ins and posts to map the last known location of your contacts.

Want to avoid that neighbour who always wants to stop-and-chat? Done.

Or ensure you don’t have an awkward run-in with an ex?

Easy.

The easy way to avoid the people you don’t want to see.

It’s the anti-social network, if you will — “incognito mode for real life,” as Cloak’s website puts it.

You can easily check the map or, in particularly hazardous cases, “flag” people to trigger a notification when they pass within a defined radius that can be as little as a block or as far as three kilometres.

The app links only with photo-sharing platform Instagram and the location-based social network Foursquare. If you use neither of these, Cloak will be impotent.

According to Cloak’s privacy policy, the app will not collect, save, or see any content from your Instagram or Foursquare accounts.

“The app operates completely on your end without communicating anything back to us,” the policy says