The recent announcements from Facebook have raised significant privacy concerns. In fact, the concerns are so big that it makes Google’s recent problems with Google Buzz look innocent. As Facebook’s default is Social, users are opted in for the services by default. So if you have concerned about privacy, you need to manually opt out of such services.
How does it affect your privacy though?
The two major services are: Facebook Social Plugins and Facebook Instant Personalization.
With Social Plugins, the third parties only include an Facebook iframe in their pages and the sites don’t actually have your Facebook data. All the data is being served by Facebook. There is no opting out of Facebook Social Plugins.
However the second one – Facebook Instant Personalization is creepy and dangerous. Any sites that uses the Instant Personalization eg CNN, Pandora, and Yelp (and many more coming) will have access to all your data as soon as you are authenticated to Facebook. This will raise serious privacy concerns for many people. But you do have the option of opting out.
Please take the next two minutes to go through your settings and do yourself a favor. Here’s how you can opt out of Facebook Instant Personalization:
1. Opt out of Facebook Instant Personalization
Login to your Facebook account.
Go to Privacy Settings -> Applications and Websites.
Uncheck the “Instant Personalization” checkbox which is checked on by default.
2. What your friends can share about you:
While you are here, notice the “What your friends can share about you” option. This lets you control what your friends can share about you in Facebook and other websites. It is turned on my default too, and people may have access to the data that you do not want them too. Your friend may be using one application and that application needs your data. What this option, you control what you give to all such applications and websites that you dont know about.
Even if you are okey with sharing whatever information you have on your Facebook profile to anyone out there, it still is good to be aware about whats going on and what are the consequences of giving access to anyone out there.
Remember, the web is changing. Use it wisely and save yourself!
