Last week Facebook announced the launch of a new set of Facebook Connect features that allow instant "personalization" of your browsing experience at websites like Docs.com and Pandora. The idea is that if you're already logged into Facebook and you visit those sites (and, in the future, many more sites besides those two), Facebook will share a huge amount of your personal, private information with them and allow them to "personalize" your experience. For example, Pandora will show you your Faceboook friends' Pandora playlists and will recomment streaming internet radio stations based on what Artists you've become a fan of (liked) on Facebook.

Despite Facebook users' protests that the opt-in nature of the new features is a blatant violation of users' privacy, Facebook users are not given a choice about whether or not to use the new features; all Facebook users will see the new features automatically enabled. Fortunately for privacy-minded people out there, there is at least a way to disable or opt-out of the new Facebook Connect features - although in classic Facebook style, they don't make it particularly easy.

Check it out:

• Option 1: Disable access to specific partner websites.

If you don't mind personalization on some websites, but don't like it on other ones, you can specifically opt-out of each partner website one by one. Of the various ways to disable this feature, this one isn't particularly difficult - but you need to do it the very first time you visit a partner website, or it'll get a lot more difficult.

The first time you visit a partner website that uses "Instant Personalization," you'll see a bar appear on the top of the page telling you that Facebook is personalizing your browsing experience. If you do nothing, the personalization will continue. If you click the "No Thanks" button, you'll be opted-out of that particular website.

The problem with this approach is that Facebook won't notify you of new partner websites, so you'll have to pay close attention to any websites you visit to see whether or not that personalization bar appears at the top of the screen. A far better way to protect yourself is to simply disable the feature entirely in Facebook's privacy settings.

• Completely Block "Instant Personalization"
1. First click "Account" on the top-right of the screen.
2. Then click "Privacy Settings" in the drop-down menu.
3. In the next screen that shows up, click "Applications and Websites."
   
4. In the next screen, find the "Instant Personalization" setting at the bottom of the screen and click the "Edit setting" button next to it.
   
5. The next page will explain what instant personalization is. Beneath the explanation is a check box that says "Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites." Uncheck that box.
   

If, like me, you're completely sure that you want nothing whatsoever to do with Facebook's "Instant Personalization" features, you can disable it completely through Facebook's privacy settings - but it's not easy, since Facebook clearly doesn't want users to know how to do it. Here's how to disable it: Once you've done that, you're done! Oh, wait a minute, no you're not. Your friends can still share your personal information - disabling that is a completely separate step.

• Stop Your Friends From Sharing Your Private Information

In the previous list, go back one level to where you would have clicked the "Edit Setting" button next to the "Instant Personalization" option. Instead, click the "Edit Settings" button next to the "What your friends can share about you."


In the next page, you'll see a long list of the various things about you that your friends can share without requiring your permission. If you want to be completely safe, uncheck every single option and remember to save the settings at the bottom of the page.

 

That, in a nutshell, is how to protect your Facebook account from their new, unasked-for changes. The entire process can take up to ten minutes; now imagine 400 million Facebook users all spending 10 minutes reversing a change that none of them asked for in the first place. How Facebook escapes prosecution for this kind of crap is completely beyond me.