Facebook Instant Personalization: Behind the scene

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Facebook’s impulsive transitions and doubling intricacies has turned the social network more geeky than user-friendly. We had already discussed the fallacy behind the Like feature. Latest complication added to Facebook, Instant Personalization doesn’t seem safe on privacy. What’s unacceptable, even if you know nothing about the new feature, Facebook has already checked the Instant Personalization check box for you. The feature is set to personalize your experience using your public Facebook information. There are three carefully selected initial partners for Microsoft’s Docs.com, Yelp and Pandora that have access to Instant Personalization feature. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg puts it modestly, when you visit “Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you’ve liked.” It’s not as simple as it sounds, we researched what’s behind the scene.

We cannot, but agree with CenterNetworks,

Facebook is sharing the profile and usage data with third parties from the first moment you land on one of their
trusted partners. Facebook might require you to opt-in to this “instant personalization”.

Clearly, it is acceptable that websites are enhancing their services using Facebook data when you specifically choose to each and every time.

Then what’s actually wrong with Instant personalization? Suppose you show up to Yelp, it will now be able to look directly at your Facebook profile and use public information such as name, profile picture, gender and connections, plus anything else you’ve made public. We expect the checkbox should be opt-in and not opt-out.

Bobbi Newman’s post offers a big picture of the situation detailing what Facebook is up to with their instant personalization. What makes Bobbi’s investigation really stick is the bit that even if you turn off the instant personalization, your friends may just share your data with Facebook trusted partners.

With all said and done you might decide to get rid of Instant Personalization, here’s how.

In order to fully opt-out of the new instant personalization feature, you need to do the following

1. Go to the privacy settings in Profile link on to and then to Applications and Websites or directly go here. Uncheck the box at the bottom to remove Instant Pesonalization.

2. The click on the links to Yelp, Pandora and Docs.om on Facebook and click on Block Application.

For more, you might also review settings for what friends can share and sharing your profile information.