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Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends: Chrome extension exports Facebook contacts

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Re: Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends: Chrome extension exports Facebook contacts

#31

I would highly recommend against using this tool, as it is against Facebook's Terms of Service. Robert Scoble was kicked off Facebook in January 2008 for pulling a stunt exactly like this ( http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-off-of-face... ). While his fame and contacts allowed him to get his account reinstated in short order, many of us might not be so fortunate.

Well,

I'd be curious what would happen if thousand of people used the tool rather a lone researcher.

As we saw with Facebook's censorship and uncensorship of lamebook.com, their "terms" seem to be essentially "we'll do what we can get away with and back-off if enough people push back".

Re: Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends: Chrome extension exports Facebook contacts

#32
post #26
post #23

edit: I mis-spoke. You'd need to request the email address from each user individually. Okay, I admit, that is kindof sucky. That said, I completely understand this move. My guess is that this is to prevent "farmville" from dumping a list of all of my friends' emails, and then spamming them. Isn't this all available via the Open Graph API? ( http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web#personalizati... ) Edit: Yes,…

Email addresses aren't in there. When I look at my own info, I see a @proxymail.facebook.com email address, which is presumably what an app would use to email me. It's not what you'd want for exporting contact info.

yes: "Getting an access token for a user with no extended permissions allows you to access the information that the user has made available to everyone on Facebook. If you need specific information about a user, like their email address or work history, you must ask for the specific extended permissions. "

Re: Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends: Chrome extension exports Facebook contacts

#37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email addresses aren't in there. When I look at my own info, I see a @proxymail.facebook.com email address, which is presumably what an app would use to email me. It's not what you'd want for exporting contact info.

yes: "Getting an access token for a user with no extended permissions allows you to access the information that the user has made available to everyone on Facebook. If you need specific information about a user, like their email address or work history, you must ask for the specific extended permissions. "

You can only get information about one user at a time that way. Exporting the data can't be done. If you disagree, write the code.

Re: Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends: Chrome extension exports Facebook contacts

#38
post #33

I wrote a similar tool two years ago: http://www.chrisfinke.com/2008/01/03/take-your-facebook-data... If my experience is any indication, the author will be receiving a takedown notice shortly.

They don't, however, seem to mention their names anywhere. If Facebook knows the name of the author, they can threaten to ban them from Facebook if they don't take it down (about the only leverage they have to exploit).

However, to get a real name, they would need to get Google to reveal an IP address, and then the user's ISP to reveal account details - hardly a simple process.

Google isn't going to hand over the IP of the authors, so they would need to file a (probably baseless) lawsuit and try to subpoena the names - something Google is likely to fight since the software is in their interests too.

Re: Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends: Chrome extension exports Facebook contacts

#40

why not add the ability to get phone numbers too?

There is a Sony Ericsson application in Facebook which retrieves all your friends' phone numbers and upload it to their servers which then can be synced with any Sony Ericsson phone . Then I can download it as CSV by connecting the phone to the PC. A round about way but it works. So I guess there might be other apps which does this.
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