Deactivating "Instant Personalization"

Facebook launched "Instant Personalization" along with other privacy changes last week. This change shares user information with third party web sites Yelp, Microsoft Docs and Pandora. It also opens the door to other partners and advertisers to glean more information about you.

Two nonprofit groups, in response to Facebook's privacy changes last week, put out messages to voice their opposition: The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a timeline of Facebook's privacy policy modifications over the years, and liberal activist group MoveOn.org launched a Facebook group called "Facebook, respect my privacy!".

"They've launched a new program that shares info about you and your friends with external websites--whether you want them to or not," the MoveOn.org group, which had over 14,000 members on Friday afternoon, explained. "They're calling it 'instant personalization.' We're calling it a major violation of your privacy. Again."

There are ways to stop personalization on the partner sites. You can opt out on the sites web page individually or you can opt out on the Facebook site itself. These options are not made clear on either the Facebook or partner web sites, but here is how you do it.


The Bottom Line:

• When you first visit any of these three partner sites while logged into Facebook, you’ll see a blue bar appear at the top of the site letting you know that your experience is being personalized. You can choose to learn more, remove the personalized experience or click "x" to remove the bar.

• If you don't want your experience personalized on these limited number of sites, you can opt out by clicking here. You can also navigate there by going to 'Account' > 'Privacy settings' > 'Applications and Websites' > 'Instant Personalization Pilot Program'

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Related Articles

• Activist groups launch new Facebook privacy offensive (news.cnet.com)
• Timeline of Facebook privacy policy: from reasonable (2005) to apocalyptic (2010) (boingboing.net)
• Facebook's moves and personalized advertising (glinden.blogspot.com)