The newest brewha on Facebook involves what is called Instant Personalization. Instant personalization has existed since April but people are only paying attention now because the major roll out just took place.
In essence Instant Personalization allows sites to pay for and share information about what you “like” on Facebook, meaning when you click like on something Facebook is sharing that data. When you or one of your friends visit one of the included sites your information is shared to that site.
Currently the sites using Instant Personalization are Bing, TripAdvisor, Clicker, Rotten Tomatoes, Docs, Pandora, Yelp, and Scribd. When you visit any of these sites they should give you the option to turn off the service. Facebook has a page explaining Instant Personalization here.
You can disable Instant Personalization if you so desire as follows:
- Click on Account (right, top corner)
- Privacy Settings
- Apps and Websites
- Instant Personalization
- Edit Settings
- Make sure Enable is not checked
Kind of hid that one, didn’t they?
Here’s the problem. Unlike many other Facebook settings even if you turn off Instant Personalization, if your friends don’t you are still vulnerable to having your information shared. So you want to make sure your privacy settings are properly enabled as well. I wrote a blog post on editing your privacy settings earlier this month. Check it out here.
Predicting another blow up around the Web in 3…2…1…