Facebook and Internet Privacy

Posted on | April 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

Facebook recently announced several partnerships with some important online and digital media companies. Facebook is trying to figure out a way to leverage all the data they’ve collected about you and the relationships you have with others. They’re calling it “Instant Personalization” and not “Selling Your Information” because one sounds better than the other. “Instant Personalization” is turned on by default, so if you do not want your personal information to be sold to other online companies, you will need to change your privacy settings.

To change your settings, click on Account, then Privacy Settings, then Instant Personalization. Uncheck the checkbox, and all is back to normal! Wait, no. It’s not really back to normal – remember, Facebook has a LOT of data about you – do you think they’re going to let you off the hook this easily? Do you think you can control every piece of data about you all by yourself? You can’t, and this is true in real life as well – your friends also know quite a bit about you, and Facebook unfortunately compels them (through an opt-in policy which most users will never look at unless you stumble across this blog) to share this information.

Apparently you can’t control all of what your friends share, so Facebook made the decision that you will have to block each application individually. And every time Facebook adds a partner that they share data with, you will have to go back to your settings and block these new companies. So far, Pandora, Yelp!, and Microsoft’s Docs.com are the three applications that you will need to block, and you can only do this on the actual application’s facebook page. For your convenience, I’ll list those here: Pandora, Yelp, Docs.com – just visit each of them while you’re logged into your Facebook account, and click “Block Application.”

There are other account settings that you should take a look at as long as you’re protecting your privacy online. Take a look at what data is publicly available about you, and what your friends can share about you (click Privacy Settings, then Applications and Websites, and Edit Settings next to “What Your Friends Can Share About You” – you might be amazed), and how to keep yourself out of search results if you don’t want to be found (click Privacy Settings, then Search).

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