Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–109 of 109 posts

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#101

Post by jmathai »

Locke1689 wrote: post #54
Shenglong wrote: post #38

I 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.

FYI, 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.

The Data Liberation Front is a good first step but providing content in the form of a zip file is pretty useless. True data portability is much tougher and probably isn't worth an investment from a company like Google if it were even something they wanted to do.

Disclaimer: I'm bootstrapping OpenPhoto on Kickstarter

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#102

Post by wnight »

Silhouette wrote: post #93
calloc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend has shared their contact information on Facebook, I decide to contact them using my iPhone, and save their contact information. That now gets sync'ed from my phone to my Mac, which is sync'ed with Google because I use gmail for my main email account and I like to have all of my contact information also available from within gmail and more importantly google voice so that I know when people send me text mess…

I'm giving up on this thread now. The endless downvotes instead of replies and people missing the point are just disheartening. One more time, for the record: Your friend trusted you with their personal data, not Google. You may not personally have a problem with sharing your own personal data with Google, but not everyone is like you, and some people do. That doesn't mean they have a problem with sharing the data wi…

Your phone number and email address were never meant to be secret. That only provides security by obscurity and leads to exactly this problem - you, a user, being upset when the security you were led to expect doesn't align with reality.

If you wish to not receive certain communications the way to do this is by screening incoming connections/contents. This works, unlike secrets.

Now, understanding that what you wanted to do (keep an email address secret) is a bad idea - it won't do what you want, you can see why those who understand don't care about this "privacy" - it isn't.

Claiming to authorize your email address being shared with CompanyX but not CompanyY is like saying "Here's my phone number, I'm only lettingVerizon subscribers know it, to keep AT&T from snooping on which of their users calls me." It's just nonsensical.

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#103

Post by wnight »

brendano wrote: post #51

There 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 friend…

> If you've downloaded it already you're depriving them of the right to control their own data.

If you don't forget them between meetings you're trampling their right to a fresh impression.

If you remember that tune you're infringing on the RIAA's right to sell you another impression.

But that's not how information works.

If we pander to this mindset we're only letting them down when their illusion of control is shattered by the cold, hard, reality of cut-and-paste.

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#104

Post by bad_user »

Silhouette wrote: post #94
calloc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no good way for Google to provide encryption within its gmail product without having the user provide the key to the browser/javascript (easily stolen) and or having the key stored on their servers (ease of use). The unfortunate side effect of encryption is that it is not transparent, it requires users to be completely aware of what is and isn't encrypted and also to be completely aware of where their keys a…

Oh, come on. Are you really suggesting that a world that managed to build the Internet, where the mathematicians developed concepts like public key encryption and password hashing, where many banks routinely issue physical tokens for two-factor authentication before access to secure systems, and where several nations run national ID databases, we couldn't manage to devise a system where every user has unique credenti…

     we couldn't manage to devise a system where every user 
     has unique credentials to access sensitive systems 
     without those systems themselves being able to decrypt 
     the user's data?
In the case of the GMail web interface, which I can tell you it's better than any desktop client I ever used, no, it isn't possible.

It isn't, because then Google cannot render email messages in the browser for you. And if it did decryption with Javascript, it's still their client and their client can still send back information about your emails to them.

Then you've got the problem of losing functionality. I love GMail because it does a good job of searching through my emails, or filtering them. And, ever since I switched to GMail, my spam problems are over.

Of course you could argue that with encrypted emails, spam is eliminated because you can just filter away messages for which you don't have a decryption key.

But this also represents a usability problem - getting the decryption key of every user that sends you email it's a PITA; and it would also prevent unsolicited emails that you do want (like old friends contacting you for the first time, or job offers).

Really, for encrypted email to work, you have to trust the client and it cannot be the default.

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#105

Post by icebraining »

calloc wrote: post #97
icebraining wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, here in Portugal (and I hear in Belgium they have a similar system) our national ID card can sign and encrypt data using an internal private & public keys. That could be used to encrypt email securely even on a rogue machine. The main technical problem is the lack of readers. The actual main problem is user education - nobody knows how to work with them.

How would it encrypt email on a rogue machine, securely? If the machine is rogue and has all key presses and has the plaintext how can it be secure then? Sure it is encrypted but it is already compromised.

Oh, sure, the current email is compromised, but not the key (since the encryption/decryption is performed by the card itself). The advantage is that you can use a public machine to check a non-important email without giving them the keys to all others or letting them email faking your identity.

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#106

Post by icebraining »

bad_user wrote: post #104
Silhouette wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, come on. Are you really suggesting that a world that managed to build the Internet, where the mathematicians developed concepts like public key encryption and password hashing, where many banks routinely issue physical tokens for two-factor authentication before access to secure systems, and where several nations run national ID databases, we couldn't manage to devise a system where every user has unique credenti…

we couldn't manage to devise a system where every user has unique credentials to access sensitive systems without those systems themselves being able to decrypt the user's data? In the case of the GMail web interface, which I can tell you it's better than any desktop client I ever used, no, it isn't possible. It isn't, because then Google cannot render email messages in the browser for you. And if it did decryption w…

I don't think it would eliminate spam - the system would probably use PGP key servers to avoid the hassles of key sharing.

But yes, it's an usability nightmare now that everyone is using webapps. And even with native apps, having to copy the private key from your computer to your smartphone would be over most people's heads.

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#107

Post by calloc »

icebraining wrote: post #105
calloc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would it encrypt email on a rogue machine, securely? If the machine is rogue and has all key presses and has the plaintext how can it be secure then? Sure it is encrypted but it is already compromised.

Oh, sure, the current email is compromised, but not the key (since the encryption/decryption is performed by the card itself). The advantage is that you can use a public machine to check a non-important email without giving them the keys to all others or letting them email faking your identity.

How do you know an email is non-important if it is encrypted?

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#108

Post by icebraining »

calloc wrote: post #107
icebraining wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, sure, the current email is compromised, but not the key (since the encryption/decryption is performed by the card itself). The advantage is that you can use a public machine to check a non-important email without giving them the keys to all others or letting them email faking your identity.

How do you know an email is non-important if it is encrypted?

You usually with PGP don't encrypt neither the sender nor the subject, just the contents, it shouldn't be hard to decide based on that information.

Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

#109

Post by brendano »

sorbus wrote: post #52
brendano wrote: post #51

There 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 friend…

> 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…

> 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)?

That would be a fine system -- where phone numbers and other means of contact can become invalidated if the owner wants them to.

Post reply on HN