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Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

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Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#61

Post by djloche »

angry-hacker wrote: post #22

Does anyone know if there is some kind of possibility to copy facebook contacts to my phone? I'm using Android+Facbook sync. Phone is rooted... I have at least 100 people who are facebook contacts and the ones I don't want to loose, but I'm not even able to copy paste their number not to mention copying them to phone/sim card... I know facebook doesn't want you to do it, but there has to be a way....

The way I copied facebook contact information was to sync to yahoo contacts, then export yahoo contacts, then import into google contacts.

I'm not sure how this would work on/in the mobile ecosystem, but I'd have to imagine that getting on your desktop/laptop computer for a few minutes would be worth the effort of backing up the information.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#62

Post by prodigal_erik »

samstave wrote: post #35
nphase wrote: post #29

I just deleted the Facebook app from my iPhone. I have no idea if it altered any of my contacts, but this certainly does scare me enough to warrant deletion.

Delete facebook from your life. Lawyer up. Hit the gym. Words to live by.

If your HN contribution is nothing more than a catchy meme, you're gonna have a bad time.

(So am I. I'm aware.)

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#63

Post by wtallis »

crazygringo wrote: post #53

The more important question is, what are Apple and Google doing allowing apps write access to a user's address book?? I can't believe anyone at Facebook was dumb enough to think this was a good idea. But at the same time, I can't believe some "rogue engineer" did this by accident. I'm curious to see what Facebook says about it.

It sounds like this is iOS's built-in Facebook integration that was blindly trusting Facebook's data.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#64

Post by jarek »

falling wrote: post #45
jpeterson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference here is that everything they've done before now has been more or less bounded by my own actions. If they screw my privacy, it's my own damned fault for posting sensitive stuff to their site. Hell, even if they track me around the web, I should've been more careful about blocking their cookies. But this is another ballgame. What they've done here is effectively hijack a completely unrelated and…

I don't mean to defend them because this move is stupid, but to help you get this back in control: you can go you your about page and set the @facebook email to be hidden. I had done this in the past and they didn't touch it.

I, as well, have set the @facebook.com address as hidden and set my normal address as visible and public. After the story broke I found my usual address "hidden from timeline" and the @facebook.com address visible.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#65

Post by jarek »

jarofgreen wrote: post #55
californian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go to Settings >> Accounts & Sync, can you at least uncheck "Sync Contacts" for Facebook?

Or just remove your Facebook login credentials entirely, thus rendering the app unable to do anything? (I don't have that exact model but I think this should work, no?)

I have the Facebook app forced on my Nexus One (thanks, Google!) but I never logged in and it didn't touch my contacts as hoped.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#66

Post by notJim »

crazygringo wrote: post #53

The more important question is, what are Apple and Google doing allowing apps write access to a user's address book?? I can't believe anyone at Facebook was dumb enough to think this was a good idea. But at the same time, I can't believe some "rogue engineer" did this by accident. I'm curious to see what Facebook says about it.

Android has a feature where you can indicate that contacts from disparate services are actually the same person. For example, I have my friend Chris in my Android directory, my Gmail directory, on Facebook and on Twitter. Within my contact list, I am able to specify that these are actually all the same person. They're still separate contacts from each service though, they're just grouped together in my phone's directory.

I suspect that the problem being described happens when the only source of someone's email address was the Facebook contact, as I doubt that, e.g., a Facebook contact would overwrite someone Gmail contacts. At this point it's not clear, however.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#70

Post by Alex3917 »

jfoutz wrote: post #59
wikkiwa wrote: post #5

Is it not illegal to intercept private communications without the parties' consent? Seems like this opens them up to a massive lawsuit...

I think you'd have to show they accepted the email, then chose not to deliver it to the user. I think this is just incompetence. hopefully, it's coupled with a little incontinence.

But the thing is they're not supposed to get the email at all. The user goes into their contact book and selects the person they want to email, and suddenly Facebook is getting the email instead of it being sent to the person's actual email address.
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