Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Privacy Scanner is launched

reclaimprivacy.org

31–40 of 61 posts

Re: Facebook Privacy Scanner is launched

#31
post #20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt you're the only one - thats why I made the source code completely open: http://github.com/mjpizz/reclaimprivacy/blob/master/javascri... The only compressed stuff is jQuery javascript, all other Javascript is uncompressed and commented. Hope that helps. [edit: updated line number]

For the source code, I wouldn't include the compressed jQuery if possible. Speed isn't as important here as transparency and it's quite difficult to scan to tell whether there are any issues. I know you don't want to take up a lot of room with jQuery but it really will help increase my ability to recommend to others if all the code is easy to read. You might also want to put comments on slightly scary things like PAR…

I would use a CDN for the jquery, maybe http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min... - that way, people don't have to make sure you haven't hidden the maliciousness in your version of jquery, which most people might not want to verify.

Re: Facebook Privacy Scanner is launched

#34
post #4

Brillant tool and quite easy to use. My only suggestion is the "auto-fix" button, can you give me a preview as to what settings your application is going to change?

I second this. At the very least, link to somewhere where you describe what changes were made (and how to revert if I so choose).

Re: Facebook Privacy Scanner is launched

#35

Out of curiosity, is this a violation of Facebook's terms of use?

IANAL, but it's not a facebook app so it should not need to follow Facebook TOS.

There might be trademark or other issues though. I'm glad it's opensource ( in case they get a take down notice ).

Re: Facebook Privacy Scanner is launched

#37
Neat tool - thanks for creating it.

One question - when I run it on my account there are 2 scans that never seem to return (it keeps saying "scanning"). The scans are:

- scanning personal information...

- scanning friends, tags, and connections information...

Is there something on my end I need to do? (I tried running the scanner multiple times and its on Mac firefox 3.5.9)

Re: Facebook Privacy Scanner is launched

#38
post #37

Neat tool - thanks for creating it. One question - when I run it on my account there are 2 scans that never seem to return (it keeps saying "scanning"). The scans are: - scanning personal information... - scanning friends, tags, and connections information... Is there something on my end I need to do? (I tried running the scanner multiple times and its on Mac firefox 3.5.9)

definitely, glad you like it.

That bug seems to be a problem periodically, looks like somebody already filed it on the issue tracker:

http://github.com/mjpizz/reclaimprivacy/issues/#issue/2

if you know any Javascript pros who could help, point them at the source code :) Hopefully get some patches tonight.

Re: Facebook Privacy Scanner is launched

#39
If you are serious about people getting to use it, consider putting the source directly on the site, along with comments suitable for the layman. I'm sharing this link and having people say "But what if it steals my info!" and while I can tell them it's open source and they can look at the code themselves, that's not something the majority of my friends can do.
Post reply on HN