Facebook has announced through an email to its users, that it plans to share information between itself and affiliate companies like Instagram and similar services. This is expected to begin as of the 28th November.

While the email wasn't specifically about this, in the Policy section, it does discuss a new affiliate information sharing scheme that reads as follows: “We may share information we receive with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Facebook is part of, or that become part of that group (often these companies are called affiliates). Likewise, our affiliates may share information with us as well. We and our affiliates may use shared information to help provide, understand, and improve our services and their own services.”

According to Wired, Instagram has a similar policy built into its terms and conditions. Both efforts are supposedly designed to help with targeted advertising, so if you look at certain photos on your Instagram, you'll probably see applicable adverts on your Facebook account.

The interesting part however, could come from those that don't have accounts on both services. Will that mean we'll see adverts imploring us to sign up to the service? Perhaps the lack of instagram data will mean we won't see as many photographs on Facebook?

We've contacted Facebook for clarification and will update this if/when we hear back from them.

KitGuru Says: This isn't anything particularly scandalous, but users should be aware their data is being shared around. How do you guys feel about this?

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