Facebook's Instant Personalization. New goodbye to privacy?

Recently, a friend was a bit nervous about this message someone had passed on to her:

"FACEBOOK FYI: ALERT* NEW PRIVACY setting called "Instant Personalization" that shares data with non-Facebook websites and it is automatically set to "Enable." Go to Account>Privacy Settings>Applications and Websites>Instant Personalization>at bottom of page Edit Settings, and un-check "Enable". BTW if your friends don't do this, they will be sharing information about you."

There is no need to panic, let's see what Instant Personalization is about:

The feature was announced back in April 2010 at the Facebook F8 conference and it's already been a matter of discussion for a while. It's nothing illegal, the controversy started when Facebook decided to enable the feature by default. It works by allowing third party websites (TripAdvisor, Yelp, Pandora, etc) to use our profile's public info and your friends' to give you more tailored recommendations.

Is it dangerous? no. Is it taking a bit more privacy away from you? yes. Is it beneficial? The idea is great. The fact Facebook enabled it without asking you is a bit scary. "Making the web more social". I too believe the future is a more interrelated web, in which you no longer visit one page and log in to have it customized to you, but have a common platform to share info among your list of daily websites. Sites like writeonglass.com, run by one of the co-founders of tuenti.com, reflect this idea.

In my case, Instant Personalization is disabled because it's not yet available for me, maybe due to localization, being based in Spain and all that. So go check your Facebook and see if you can turn off instant personalization altogether. I will do it, but just because I don't like others taking decisions for me, specially about my privacy.

As as side note, and without entering into the Wikileaks-privacy war, take a look at this Assange vs. Zuckerberg pic; popular lately mainly due to the fact that Assange was not chosen man of the year by the Times, but adequate in this context to show how each of them works with privacy.