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Some Facebook users are not fans of new instant personalization feature

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Popular social networking service Facebook Inc. this week unveiled new features that let users interact with their friends across the Web. The most notable is a ‘Like’ button that shows you what your friends enjoyed on a website.

But some users are raising privacy concerns about a feature that instantly personalizes sites you visit. And they object to being forced to jump through multiple hoops to opt out of it.

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The feature automatically shares personal information with three third parties: review site Yelp, music site Pandora and Microsoft’s online documents site Docs.com. That way, Yelp can show you restaurants your friends have reviewed and Pandora can play music you say you like on your Facebook profile.

That’s just too creepy for some people.

You can go through multiple steps to turn off that feature. Or technology blog GigaOm provided directions to a simpler solution: deactivating Facebook accounts.

One high-profile defector did just that: Google Inc.’s chief spam fighter Matt Cutts. Cutts declined to comment.

-- Jessica Guynn

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