As a growing number of people deactivate their Facebook accounts due to privacy concerns, Facebook has announced something called Instant Personalization. True to form, users are automatically opted in to the new features.
Instant Personalization will share key information from your Facebook profile with other websites.
Until now, when you browsed the web, it was safe to assume you were anonymous until you actively logged into a site. But in recent years, behavioral advertisers have started following us around as we browse, using cookies to find out where we’ve been in order to offer up customized ads on new pages we visit.
Instant Personalization means that when you visit a website, it will automatically know your name, email address, and even who you’re friends with, all without you ever knowing or consenting to it.
The main privacy concern is that this level of access is open to abuse, Facebook, which has a dubious privacy history of its own has decline to specify how it will safeguard users and prevent the onward distribution of this information.
To disable this you have to follow these steps:
- 1. Log into your Facebook profile.
- 2. Go to “Account” in the top right
- 3. Select “Privacy Settings”
- 4. Select “Applications and Websites”
- 5. Select “Instant Personalization”
- 6. Uncheck “Allow”