Instant Personalization, a rather innocent term that packs a powerful punch of openness. Facebook has long been applauded for their changes to their site with new means of interacting with friends with friends lists, third party applications with the ability to edit privacy settings for applications, gifts (which if you are not a fan, feel free to block Facebook gifts) but with that comes criticism over the privacy policy that users have come to expect. The changes last week with Facebook’s Like and Link is no different and has been met with much controversy but not necessarily as one would immediately think. With like and link, users were prompted to accept or deny recommended pages. Once you accept the pages, your profile is linked to that Community Page. Seemed harmless as if you say that you liked something then you probably did and being linked to a page that shared and supported your likes was just broadening your horizons and introducing you a new page to share your thoughts and ideas and who knows you just may meet a new friend. Hmh, nothing really to horrible with that and plus you could deny them all and not be linked to any site and your profile is safe right? Yeah … no.
Facebook’s Instant Personalization
Instant personalization is part of the new like and link feature and sits deep inside your privacy settings. Instant personalization is defaulted as opted in which means that access to some of your personal information is potentially exposed. Confusing, it sure is. In a nutshell, you liked, you exposed. I pretty sure that this is not what people signed up for as yes you have to opt-in and accept the page that you like but was it very clear that instant personalization existed and that it was set as an automatic opt-in by Facebook?
How to Opt out of Instant Personalization
1. On your Facebook page, click Account and then Privacy Settings.
2. Click Applications and Websites.
3. Click the “Edit Setting” box to the right of Instant Personalization (last item on menu).
4. Once inside Instant Personalization, uncheck the box at the bottom.
Safe now right? Not so fast as what are your settings as far as what you friends can share about you to sites they have liked and linked?
How to Edit What Your Friends are Sharing About You
Your friends are your friends and for the most part they would never intentionally share your private information with a site that have opted into. However, innocently they very well may be. If you want to add a higher level of security that goes a bit deeper than trust, you can edit what your friends are able to share about you.
1. Again, go into Account on your profile.
2. Click Privacy Settings.
3. Click Applications and Websites
4. Click “Edit Settings” to the right of What Your Friends Can Share About You.
5. Check or uncheck boxes to determine what your friends can share about you.
All of these options can be changed at any time should you change your mind. Facebook is going the extra mile here to try and open up their application to outside sources to share your profile. Sure they want you as a user to have the best experience and build a community within the community pages which is great but you are not selecting those people to be friends with as you do with Twitter, LinkedIn and even Foursquare. Your profile is being exposed to other users just because you are sharing the same interest.This potentially could cause a lot of problems as it is not difficult to know what is popular and what people may easily like and be able to have instant access to them.
Have you opted out? Do you protect you what your friends can share about you?
