photo by rpongsaj  

Recently Facebook introduced a new “feature” called Instant Personalization that automatically opts you in to sharing your personal information (and your friend’s personal information) with various websites automatically when you visit them. Of course Facebook sells this as a feature to improve your online experience, but personally I think it is a gross invasion of your privacy (especially since Instant Personalization is automatically turned on – it would be different if you could decide that you wanted to share your information and it didn’t automatically share your friends information too). Fortunately you can opt-out of instant personalization, but Facebook does not make it easy (yesterday the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a great video showing you how to correctly opt-out, but this morning Facebook changed their site to make it even harder to opt-out completely).

Currently, to completely opt-out of Instant Personalization you need to take the following steps:

1. If you are not already logged in to Facebook, do so.
   
2. In the upper right hand corner of the screen click “Account”.
3. In the menu that opens, click “Privacy Settings”.
4. Click the “Applications and Websites” link.
5. Click the “Edit Settings” button in the “Instant Personalization” section of the page (near the bottom of the page).
6. Uncheck the checkbox labeled “Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites.”
7. In the confirmation pop-up that opens right-click (or control-click on a Mac) the “Learn More” link and choose to “Open Link In New Tab”.
   • “Open Link In New Tab” is the menu item label in Mozilla Firefox, if you are not using Firefox there should be a similar menu item in the menu that opens when you right-click the link in your browser.
8. Switch back to the original tab (if clicking “Open Link In New Tab” switched you to the new tab).
9. Click the “Confirm” button.
10. Switch to the new tab
11. Click the “How do I opt-out of instant personalization?” link (near the bottom of the page).
12. In the answer section that opens when you click the “How do I opt-out of instant personalization?” link, there will be a list of all the applications (websites) that currently use the Instant Personalization service. Open each link in a new tab (using the same method from step 7).
13. For each tab that you opened, click the “Block Application” link (near the upper left of the page).
14. Periodically visit the Facebook “Help Center – Social Plugins and Instant Personalization” page (currently http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1068) and repeat step 11-13 to check for any new websites/applications to block.

Unfortunately, protecting yourself from Instant Personalization will be an ongoing process unless Facebook chooses to allow users to completely opt-out (including information shared through friends that have not opted-out of the “service”) or you decide to completely delete your Facebook profile.

I will do my best to try and keep this article as accurate as possible, but please let me know if Facebook changes the opt-out procedure again and I miss it (or I made a mistake or logical error in the guide).

I know this post is a little bit different from the normal day-to-day here at Meets The Weird, but I strongly feel that personal privacy is a basic right and that you are the only person that should be allowed to make a decision about what level of privacy is right for you. I think this is especially important in fields like ufology, cryptozology and other paranormal topics where unfortunately then can be a certain social stigma attached to people with those interests. Deciding to be public about your interests and hobbies is (and should always be) your own choice, not the choice of a faceless entity looking to sell your personal information.

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