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This whole indexing business worries me. They actually store my data internally to provide these "instant search" capabilities. Im pretty sure this goes against

by vladgur 16y ago

This whole indexing business worries me. They actually store my data internally to provide these "instant search" capabilities. Im pretty sure this goes against terms of API use of many data providers. Linked in for instance says the following at http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1013 http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1013 "3.4 Data Storage and Conversion. You may not store or cache any Content returned or received through the APIs, including data about users, longer than the current usage session of the user for which it was obtained, except for the alphanumeric user IDs we provide you for identifying users, unless and to the extent that such storage or caching is expressly allowed in the Platform Guidelines. You may store the alphanumeric user IDs we provide you indefinitely unless we terminate your use of the APIs for breach of these Terms. The restrictions of this Section do not apply to “Independent Data,” which means data that users provide directly to you, provided that you cannot convert data received from the APIs to Independent Data (e.g., by obtaining it from the APIs and asking the user for permission); Independent Data must have been separately entered, uploaded, or presented to you by the user of your Application." Basically Linked disallows storing data directly or converting/hashing/indexing it and then storing it. It only allows storage of user ids. Yet greplin is getting away. I suppose they pay for special data licensing.

mayank 16y ago
I agree, this is quite worrying, and I'm not aware of "data licensing" for services like Facebook. From the FAQ: --Greplin updates your data approximately every 20 minutes, however, in high-load situations, updates can take up to a day. So it definitely seems like all your data ends up in a giant DB somewhere. Unless they've worked out amazing data licensing contracts with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter, I'd be very surprised if this was legal. EDIT: Facebook appears to have changed their data retention policies from what they were. The 24-hour caching restriction seems to have been removed: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies
ntoshev 16y ago
I don't know what Greplin is doing, but indexing alone doesn't imply they cache your data somewhere. Although the index contains pieces of your text, you can't reconstruct it from the inverted index alone.
- mychacho 16y ago
  From usability standpoint, they have this google-instant-search-esque thing going where they produce instant search result with text as soon as you start typing. So unless they are hitting the APIs of every provider you authorized to them and searching through them in near real time, they are storing the data.

by vladgur 16y ago

mayank 16y ago

I agree, this is quite worrying, and I'm not aware of "data licensing" for services like Facebook. From the FAQ: --Greplin updates your data approximately every 20 minutes, however, in high-load situations, updates can take up to a day. So it definitely seems like all your data ends up in a giant DB somewhere. Unless they've worked out amazing data licensing contracts with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter, I'd be very surprised if this was legal. EDIT: Facebook appears to have changed their data retention policies from what they were. The 24-hour caching restriction seems to have been removed: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies

ntoshev 16y ago

I don't know what Greplin is doing, but indexing alone doesn't imply they cache your data somewhere. Although the index contains pieces of your text, you can't reconstruct it from the inverted index alone.

mychacho 16y ago
From usability standpoint, they have this google-instant-search-esque thing going where they produce instant search result with text as soon as you start typing. So unless they are hitting the APIs of every provider you authorized to them and searching through them in near real time, they are storing the data.