10 ms·
Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
- mike-cardwell 15y agoApparently there is a sanctioned method for pulling all of your Facebook friends into Yahoo contacts: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/invite-your-entire-facebook-graph-into-google-plus/2124 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/invite-your-entire-faceboo... From there you can do what you want with them.
- spot 15y agothen someone should make an extension (or webapp) that walks you through creating the throwaway yahoo account and moving everything into G+.
- windsurfer 15y agoI believe automating any part of the sign up process with Yahoo! is against the TOS.
- rufibarbatus 15y agoThankfully, Yahoo! now lets you create an account via Facebook Connect, which makes the whole exporting contacts ordeal super easy.
- blackRust 15y agoAlso means @givememydata doesn't work. Was just planning on extracting list of email addresses... https://twitter.com/#!/givememydata/status/88181497894404096 https://twitter.com/#!/givememydata/status/88181497894404096
- tomelders 15y agoAny legal eagles here on HN care to comment on the legality of this? I would have hoped that data protection laws (I'm in the UK) would have protected this, since it provides me with access to my own data.
- msy 15y agoI doubt there's a legal issue here, just grubby, low-brow behaviour, which is basically par for the course for Facebook.
- qq66 15y ago...you mean par for the course for large, powerful companies with a lot to lose.
- k_shehadeh 15y agoYeah. Except Google's DLF allows you to export just about anything and everything you can create in Google products. It's true that Google's search is it's bread and butter but in the battle for good will, Facebook keeps shooting itself in the foot.
- Silhouette 15y agoI think tomelders is talking about the legality of the plug-in, which collects personal data and provides it to another party. (Edit: Actually, on rereading, maybe he really was talking about a right of access to the Facebook data. The following stands either way.) I'm not a lawyer, but I do spend a significant amount of time working with data protection and privacy issues in the UK. With my current understanding, I don't see how that could even possibly be permitted under the data protection and privacy laws here without the consent of those whose data you're transferring to Google+. I suspect Google could get into trouble with the ICO (what, again?) if they are behind the plug-in, but if I were them, I'd be more worried about the European level privacy hawks. Here in the UK we're relatively forgiving, but Europe can and does slap down megacorps with significant penalties from time to time.
- youares2pid 15y agoMake your own social media website if you don't like it. Damn kids nowadays. ;)
- corin_ 15y agoThe 1998 data protection act is about data relating to you - the data of your friends would not be covered (obviously it would be covered for them). Even for that data, while the (British) law states that people must be able to claim the information stored about them, they have to submit a request, and the company is allowed to charge a small fee. So, no, the data protection act isn't relevant.
- UtestMe 15y agoActually they did not restrict the access to your own data, but to a specific method of accessing them. Which, I am quite sure, is no legal issue for anybody
- bad_user 15y agoYes, but you know, I have ~ 122 friends. And I invited like 40 of them to join Facebook. Now, those 122 friends are fully aware that their public email addresses and phone numbers are available to me. Those that do not want this, should not publish their emails or phone numbers or should not befriend me. What Facebook is doing here is to make it hard to export my list of friends to other places, like Google's contacts or my own phone's contacts list or Google+ or whatever. I have to go over each of those 122 acquaintances and copy/paste their data manually. What they are doing is definitely not illegal, but on the other hand I dislike Facebook so much that I'm willing to switch to a competitor that already engages in anti-competitive behavior by means of their near-monopoly, but that knows how to treat my own data.
- UtestMe 15y agoI would't be that confident Google will properly herd out contacts, eventually... It happened before with Android's openness, it can happen again with G+
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoI disagree that it is your data. If I befriend you on Facebook I am not giving you permission to bulk import my information into any old website which may or may not treat that information respectfully. People are focused on Google but forget that if they enabled this your information could be bulk imported into schemy websites who only want the data to spam. Even if those applications get banned it's too late if you're the one getting spammed and your information sold to other spam lists. The key here is that Facebook relationships are not people you trust. They are people you kind sorta know. That doesn't imply that they are trustworthy enough to hand over your personal information to do whatever they wish with.
- danoprey 15y agoI managed to use it to export my contacts about an hour ago. Successfully imported them in to Gmail and G+. Strange. I highly doubt that it is illegal, but it certainly breaks FB's TOS.
- tomjen3 15y agoHow did you import the contacts into G+?
- nishantmodak 15y agoYou can import FB contacts to Yahoo. And then G+ can import them from Yahoo!
- unicornporn 15y agoLucky me I used it to export all my contacts (with tel numbers and mail addresses) two weeks ago. It was a good extension.
- revorad 15y agoG+ should allow you to import your Facebook data if you download it using Facebook's own export tool.
- moxiemk1 15y agoFacebook's "export tool" generates an incomplete static HTML version of some of the data you put into Facebook. The friend list wouldn't really be of any use unless people had unique names.
- keeperofdakeys 15y agoGo to your google account settings, and there is an option called "Connected accounts". Facebook is listed there. I don't know what this actually does however.
- revorad 15y agoThat just gives the Googmonster access to your other social accounts data, so that it can "enhance" your search experience.
- ChrisAnn 15y agoPetty.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jnhnum1 15y ago... Their "Download my information" option excludes users' email, which makes it mostly useless for exporting your graph. Furthermore, if they were worried about server load, they would block queries altogether. Instead, what they're doing now is just hiding the email addresses if an IP address queries too rapidly. I don't think there is any explanation besides data protectionism.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- tahu 15y agoThere's always various scrapers, like this http://vytautas.jakutis.name/2011/05/27/convert-your-facebook-friend-contacts-to-csv/ http://vytautas.jakutis.name/2011/05/27/convert-your-faceboo... by me.
- chrischen 15y agoCan't you import friends by downloading your friends list using the facebook export tool? Google can use that to match people up with their friends as long as their friends have opted into Google+ with their facebook UID too.
- xtacy 15y agoThis point was raised before; the Facebook export tool does not export your social graph!
- chrischen 15y agoYou can use the API to export your friends list as facebook UIDs which can be used to reconstruct your graph assuming your friends have also opted into the third-party service with their facebook data/uid.
- ben1040 15y agoIs this particularly new news? This extension was the first thing I tried Wednesday night when I got into the service, and it didn't export anything but profile URLs. I had to make a throwaway Yahoo account to export my contacts.
- sleepyhead 15y agoFrom the article it seems like the app is scraping. Why? The Facebook Graph API should be able return all this data. That Facebook prevent scraping, which is most likely conducted by some scamming services, is a good thing IMHO considering most (all?) of the data is available through their API. If this is the case the title should be "Facebook prevents scraping" as Facebook still allows export of data through the API. The Facebook Graph API usage is managed by the specified permissions for the app and thus you can control it to a greater extend compared to a browser extension which could do whatever it wants to the pages you visit and your authenticated session.
- someone13 15y agoFrom what I understand, the "official" API doesn't include friends' emails.
- sleepyhead 15y agoYou are right. It only returns name and id. You can only get the email address of the authorized user. I still understand why Facebook would prevent scraping though. And also I see many exploits of allowing access to your friends email addresses.
- Shenglong 15y agoI think this is just pissing users off. I want to import my contacts into Google+, but I currently have no desire to leave Facebook. After seeing this, that changes a bit.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Locke1689 15y agoFYI, if you go into Google+ and go to your account settings, you'll see a link called "Data Liberation." This link will allow you to download all of your data -- contacts, posts, pictures; everything -- and take it wherever you like. The Data Liberation Front is Google's project to make sure that you can withdraw your data from all Google sites as you please. Disclaimer: I'm a Google intern this summer.
- Shenglong 15y agoI saw that option - it's nice. I just wish I could liberate my gmail data too. Almost half a million emails, and I'd like to have a gzip of them in case something happened.
- mryan 15y agoOn Linux? This seems pretty easy to do, although I have not tried yet. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/backup-gmail-in-linux-with-getmail/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/backup-gmail-in-linux-with-get...
- Shenglong 15y agoI know, I just think Gmail should have a built in interface. It'd also be nice to be able to only download emails with a certain label, in a specific period of time, etc.
- mapgrep 15y agoI use getmail to backup my Gmail (per that link), but there is still data loss. You can either use POP and lose your labels or use IMAP and lose your unread status (IMAP mode marks everything as read - someone patched getmail to offer a "leave unread" option but the maintainer refuses to accept any such patches). Also, Google throttles your downloads - on POP this takes the form of returning just a few emails per download. It took me about three months to have a full backup at home, and I'm a paying customer (~30gb of mail on Apps Premier or whatever they're calling it today).
- phereford 15y agoI am going to start off by saying I haven't read the article. With that said, didn't Google deny Facebook from scraping contacts off of gmail a year (or two) ago? I forget the exact method they implemented, but I know it stunted Facebook's ability to scrape the emails for a good while. How is this any different?
- jkincaid 15y agoGoogle allowed Facebook to import your Google Contacts via an API for years. Last fall it blocked Facebook's access to that API, saying that they'll restore it when Facebook offers reciprocity (i.e. if Facebook begins to allow users to export their FB contacts using a similar API, then Google will reactivate Facebook's access to the Google Contacts API). Facebook's argument has always been that it doesn't think you have the right to export your friends' contact information (or at least, they're endlessly pondering whether you have that right). Which is a ridiculous argument, because, as has been mentioned elsewhere, they already allow Yahoo Mail users to do exactly that.
- sek 15y agoThis does expose the bigotry of Facebook so much. On the other hand the valuation is merely based on the fact that they are the "one and only social network". They are dependent on this monopolistic behavior or they are screwed and can forget an IPO. Zuckerberg himself with this "i just try to connect people for the rest of my life" seems to be under this bias. He is no Steve Jobs who was able under almost any condition to create value. This social network stuff has the biggest lock-in of all internet services, but he can't prevent people from moving by force.
- Slimy 15y agoInteresting that it took the launch of Google+ for Facebook to notice this extension.
- r00fus 15y agoBegun, the social wars have!
- brendano 15y agoThere is a legitimate question here -- do you own the information about your friends, or do your friends? Many things on Facebook are a shared quasi-public, quasi-private space where the ownership isn't clear, and don't fit into our usual mental model of "I own my own data!" This example is even clearer. The app lets you export your friends' names and contact information. This isn't your information, it's your friends'. What if one of them wanted to take their phone number off the site? What if one of them wanted to hide their information from you specifically? If you've downloaded it already you're depriving them of the right to control their own data. Clearly social networks should be required to offer some sort of friend list information for export. Maybe a bare list of user ID's is all that should be required -- the information about who your friends are seems legitimately like it's yours. Joining it against names and contact information is the potentially privacy-invasive step; that could be done online, under control of your friends, not you.
- sek 15y agoWhy did Facebook import e-mails over years and still hold them in their databases? There is no way to remove them and when someone with this address enters Facebook he gets recommendations for Friends. Do they own this data? Think about this before you blame people who just try to find a way to reconnect with their friends (who are ok with being your friend on FB) on another Platform.
- sorbus 15y ago> What if one of them wanted to take their phone number off the site? What if one of them wanted to hide their information from you specifically? If you've downloaded it already you're depriving them of the right to control their own data. Consider how ridiculous that would sound if you asked "What if one of your friends had emailed you their phone number and wanted to remove your access to it (or had emailed you and wanted to remove your knowledge of their email address)? What if they gave you information in person and now want to hide it from you specifically?" That's the mental model I, personally, use for social networks: any information you choose to publish on it is fair game for whatever your friends want to do with it (and they can do whatever they want with any information I publish on it). Anyone who does not want to be contacted (or have their contact information exported into other formats - such as the linking of name and email address which is required to email) should not make it available - there's no reason to publish an email if you don't want to be emailed, and no reason to publish a phone number if you don't want to be called.
- stitchy 15y agoI think I used this extension months ago before it got blocked. Worked pretty well, but I found that it didn't get all the information that I was hoping for. Namely the e-mail address was missing for all of my contacts. Got their bio info. and other stuff though.
- yuhong 15y agoIf you search TechCrunch for "facebook google contacts", you will see some of their old stories on this.