Security & Privacy + Software & Apps

Facebook has recently changed its privacy settings, allowing a number of websites of Facebook’s choice to access your personal information. And, as has often been the case with Facebook, this is an opt-out change; in other words, the change has been made, and you have not been informed, and to go back, you must make changes to your privacy settings.

A Cnet article looks at this issue and explains how to turn off this new feature. This feature, called Instant Personalization, “shares all your publicly available information (name, profile picture, gender, and “Connections,” another new way for you to publicize all the things you’re interested in) with, right now, three partner sites: Yelp, Pandora, and Docs.com.” But it’s clear that, in the future, this information will be shared with other websites. Because, as author Molly Wood says, “I hold few illusions that Facebook’s business strategy has ever been about anything other than building up a huge user base and then selling ads to those users.”

Google went through a similar problem with its Buzz service, turning on features without even informing users. Facebook has done this in the past as well, usually backing down, then coming back more stealthily to make changes. So if you’re a Facebook user, check out the article linked above to find out how to ensure that your personal information remains personal.