A note for your non-geek friends about the new Facebook features and privacy

This "Instant Personalization" feature - isn't this far worse than what Google did with Buzz?<p>Without notifying or consulting me, Facebook has decided it is now in their best interest to tell every website I visit who I am, who my friends are, and everything I'm interested in, and have buried the option to disable this 3 screens deep.<p>This is such an unfathomable breach of privacy and trust, I feel like I must be missing something, that they can't really be doing this. What am I missing?

Sounds like a good time to delete all of the data about me on FB which isn't necessary. I barely use the site so I really can't be bothered to try to keep up with the privacy settings du jour.

I know I'm in the wrong camp to ask this question, but reading article after article for over 2 years which all have this same theme, I have to just ask again: Why do you need for others to know what you "like"? Why is that so important to people?<p>The real feeders off all this are people's egos, and advertisers. Oh, I just answered my question, I'm afraid.

More proof of the reasons for which I deleted my account.<p>Facebook seems like it's out to kill any and all privacy on the internet. And I certainly label that a Bad Thing™.

<i>Edit: Thanks for question from @BradFraser. "Can you turn it off?" ... No, you can't turn it off, unless you log out whenever you leave FB. This also means that simply by looking at an "enabled" external page they know it. There is a new privacy option under "Privacy | Applications &#38; Websites | Instant Personalization" that is enabled by default, you should turn it off so the site doesn't read your profile on visit. This can't stop Facebook however.</i><p>I'm curious about who the "them" is in this second sentence. According to Facebook's FAQ about this, no personal info is shared with sites using social plugins (<a href="http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17092" rel="nofollow">http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17092</a>).<p>Is the fear that Facebook will be collecting which third-party sites I visit?<p>But then again, a later FAQ question (<a href="http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17100" rel="nofollow">http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17100</a>) states that the third-party sites have full access to all of my non-public FB data.

I don't get this article. When I Like something, it shows up on my profile with the ability to easily remove it, and I can restrict who it's shown to (currently only Friends + Network)<p>Regardless, you don't have to hit the Like button, or share stuff on Facebook, or post on peoples walls. If you want your private information to be well, private then don't post it.