Facebook snuffs Chrome extension for uncaging 'friends' data Facebook has blocked a Google Chrome extension that let you export information about your Facebook "friends" so that data can be shuttled into competing services. Known as Facebook Friends Exporter, the extension had become particularly popular of late as a means of moving "friends data" into Google's latest Facebook …
Evil? seriously. Evil is when every single sh1tty Facebook app demands to know everything about you, your friends and everyone you have ever met before working. Automating the grabbing of a few details that you can with pen & paper is just time saving. I am skeptical that Google+ has a chance but I keep my fingers crossed that they can do something. They are perhaps the lesser of 2 weasels, weevils, evils, corporations whatever.
I'm glad Facebook are stepping on this.
It wouldn't take much for a scraper to allow a friend of mine to sign up to Google+ and keep my updates flowing into Google system. Not no, but hell no.
You want to be a part of my social network, keep it on Facebook please where I have a degree of control over the information. Don't scrape my information into Google et al.
Yep, that's what you have. What the rest of us want (and will never actually get) is 360 degrees of control.
I don't know you, so I can't just say that I wouldn't want to be part of your social network, but I keep having to log into facebook and make sure all of my settings are still set to private. The only reason the account still exists is to make Z's data miners think that I have a sex-change operation ever other month...
@"extension that let you export information about your Facebook "friends" so that data can be shuttled into competing services." ... yet Facebook are blocking people exporting their own information?!
I thought who my friends are, is MY information not Facebook's.
But it shows that Facebook considers our information more their information!
The way Facebook are treating people's information as their own is very arrogant. Which is why I will never join sites like Facebook.
It's quite simple. Yes, who your friends are is your information. But the information about those friends is not. It belongs to *YOUR FRIENDS*. That includes even something as basic as their name.
If I choose to put some information on Facebook, and share it with my friends on Facebook, then that's as far as it goes. I am not giving anyone licence to take that information and upload it into some other website. So if one of my friends foolishly choose to register with "Spamalot Fake Social Network", that does not give "Spamalot Fake Social Network" free reign to scrape all MY data simply on the ok of my friend.
Naturally I have no control over how my friend may manually transfer information, but if forced to do this they may engage their brain first and consider what they're doing and where. But if it's done with simply a press of a button then its too easy to do without any thought.
This is not to say you should trust Facebook any more than Google. But the principle is that what you upload to either website is your decision, not someone else's, friend or not.
I think I'll become that which I try to avoid!
I wish to avoid being monitored where I don't know it - I know facebook does it, I know search engines do it, and I expect that it's all going around to their respective partners.
Now however I also have to assume that it goes everywhere else, since my friends are now able to share it?
In the end I'll have to monitor everyone else, to make sure that I am not monitored!
And thus the circle is complete. Crud
There are ways of exporting your friend out of facebook, but you need to introduce a middleman. In my case it's an Android smartphone.
Just sync a phone to facebook with the facebook app. Then sync the phone to outlook express. From there you can export the windows address book in half a dozen formats including CSV which should let you create whatever format you desire.
I'm sure an Android phone will sync to Google+ directly too, but I'm not on it to try it out.
About a week ago I was able to create a Google account, link it to my Facebook account and it automatically created contacts from about 80% of my FB friends including email addresses.
As the remaining 20% didn't come over I'm guessing that there is an individual user security setting that can be turned on to disable it.
"The message was sent to xxxxxx@xxxxxx.co.uk. If you don't want to receive these emails from Facebook in the future or have your email address used for friend suggestions, you can unsubscribe. Facebook, Inc. P.O. Box 10005, Palo Alto, CA 94303"
There's your "security" setting. Apparently a whole bunch of people I know are on Facebook and would really like me to be on there too. These are all people that know my email address and phone number, so if they want to contact me they already know how.
As for the "unsubscribe" link, sorry. That's how email spammers find out an address is valid, and I don't see Facebook as any different. Bayesian filters do a far better job than believing an unsubscribe link will do what it says.
......does Google really want all the idiots that make up facebook on their shiny new social service? Surely an IQ test to gain entrance is in order................. As for those saying you have no life without facebook...... just how deluded are you exactly?
Facebook is a POS on oh so many levels - having Zuckerpunch at the top is just one reason to loathe it. The man is a plagiarising spiteful buffoon - I sincerely hope this is the beginning of the end for him..... and facebook..........
Now...... where do I sign up to Google+.........
.. the point where stopping him would cause him harm. Whatever you do, he will always make a fortune, which in US terms means he's now an expert asked on every TV show everywhere. Not bad for a socially deficient idiot who is rumoured to have started out with theft of data as well as intellectual property..
The man has all the charm and personality of a road accident, but he has money now..
sort of...
Not that I trust them, and I believe they're doing this for the wrong reasons - i.e. to protect their ability to sell your info to the highest bidder, rather than to protect your data.
However I do think there should be strict limits on the type of data you're allowed to export from social networks. As they should be a safe way for people with vague connections to interact, without ceding control of all their data to each other. Real friends will already have all this info about you anyway...
But just because your 'friends' (vague acquaintances?) have been foolish enough to donate all their personal info to Facebook shouldn't give you the right to hoover it all up, and donate it to Google as well.
You need a bleach icon. I've just agreed with Zuckerberg, I feel the need for a wash.
"Apparently a whole bunch of people I know are on Facebook and would really like me to be on there too. These are all people that know my email address and phone number, so if they want to contact me they already know how."
My sentiments entirely, and my friends know well NOT to submit any data about me to these data scraping fronts.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
