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Facebook's Instant Personalization Raises Even More Privacy Concerns

by Terrence O'Brien on April 23, 2010 at 03:10 PM


As we dig deeper and deeper into the announcements that came out of Facebook's F8 developer conference this week, we're finding more things to worry about when it comes to online privacy. We've already discussed the problems with the company's new data retention policies, but what about the centerpiece of its new push, Instant Personalization?

The idea is simple enough. Websites embed a simple widget on their page that automatically pulls in information related to the site from a person's Facebook account. Primarily, this comes in the form of a list of people who have "liked" or shared an article, song or movie, but Mark Zuckerberg hinted that this was only the tip of the personalization iceberg. Liz Gannes at GigaOM gave an example of how this new custom experience works in creepy and potentially alarming ways.

Gannes gives the example of visiting Yelp for the first time. Now, the Instant Personalization system polls her friends and automatically spits out a list of restaurant that her friends have "liked" on Yelp, even tailoring those results to her listed location. This is worrisome since Gannes never gave Yelp specific permission to user her personal information -- Facebook made the decision for her.

Jeff Jarvis at The Faster Times has similar concerns. He believes that rather than asking first how it could best serve users, Facebook first considered how it could use its pool of customers to its benefit. Jarvis argues that Facebook has essentially taken control over your online identity away from you.

If this wave of web-personalization has you reaching for your tin foil hat, there are some steps you can take to protect your personal data. As Bobbi L. Newman at Librarian for a Day discovered, Facebook makes this as difficult as possible, but its still possible to turn off many of these personalization features. First, open the "privacy settings" page from the "account" menu in the top right-hand corner. Next select "applications and websites." At the bottom of that list of options, you'll find the "instant personalization" setting button. Uncheck the box that reads: "Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites." The steps are illustrated in the gallery below, but don't get too excited, you're not done yet.

Turning Off Facebook's Instant Personalization



Even after you've clicked "confirm," your friends could still potentially share information about you with other sites. To opt-out completely, you'll have to visit the current partner sites, Docs.com, Yelp and Pandora, and choose to block them by clicking the "no thanks" link that appears in the Facebook bar at the top of the page (see above) to block the site completely.

We're used to Facebook raising serious privacy concerns, but on a grander scale, the social network is simply continuing a worrisome trend towards forcing users to opt-out of services instead of opting in. [From: GigaOM, The Faster Times and Librarian for a Day]

Tags: f8, facebook, instant personalization, InstantPersonalization, like button, LikeButton, opt out, OptOut, privacy, top, web

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