How To: Stop Facebook's Instant Personalization Privacy Setting from Sharing Your Innermost Secrets

Instant Personalization.  If you have a Facebook account, you've probably heard of it by now.  If not, you need to educate yourself— and fast.  Because they recently made some changes, affecting your privacy settings.

The new feature in Facebook's Instant Personalization shares your personal data with not only Facebook, but non-Facebook partner sites, like Bing, Rotten Tomatoes, Pandora and Yelp.

And guess what?  It's automatically enabled on your Facebook profile.

This is how Facebook describes their new, sneaky function:

Just as your News Feed on Facebook is built uniquely for you, instant personalization sites let you easily bring your friends and interests with you.

Partners adhere to Facebook's guidelines and may only use your public information to serve you a personalized experience.  Public information includes your name, profile picture, gender, networks, and other information shared with everyone.

When you first arrive on a participating site, you will see a notification and a way to turn off the customized experience in one click.  Your information can only be used to present you with a more personalized experience and cannot be transferred to advertisers or used for any other purposes.

But if you want to stop the privacy invasion now, there's a way to stop it.

To take back your privacy...

Step 1 Login

Log into your account on Facebook.

Step 2 Account

Click on the Account tab in the top right-hand corner.

Step 3 Privacy Settings

From the drop-down menu, select Privacy Settings.

Step 4 Apps & Websites

On the Privacy Settings page, click on Edit your settings in the bottom left, under Apps and Websites.

Step 5 Instant Personalization

One the Apps, Games and Websites page, click on Edit Settings for Instant Personalization.

Step 6 Un-enable

On the Instant Personalization page, go the very bottom and un-check the box that says Enable instant personalization on partner websites.

[via Facebook]