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"Screen" as in "a page you could pull up in Facebook's UI", not some secret war room in Facebook's HQ. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

• bin_bash 5y ago
  There has not been a misunderstanding. Show me a source for this “friends collector” that reads email via IMAP.
  • e1g 5y ago
    This “howto” from 2011 seems relevant https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1821514&seqNum=4 https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1821514&seq...
    • bin_bash 5y ago
      Fair enough! That fits the description well enough and I apologize to xg15. I thought I was well versed in classic Facebook features but I was wrong.
  • akerl_ 5y ago
    https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/facebook-the-missing/9781449303600/ch04.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/facebook-the-missing/97... Seems the closest to what’s being described. You’d give it your instant messenger credentials and it would log in as you and scoop up your contact lists.
  • xg15 5y ago
    Ok, then I have to backpedal. I indeed can't say for sure that they also scraped emails. Sorry for that. However, they did collect your address book - that was an openly advertised feature. My point that Facebook already back then was asking people for passwords for third-party services (not banks though) and apparently they were quite successful with it.