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Facebook Implements 'Download Your Profile' Option

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the just-want-a-damn-rss-feed dept.

eldavojohn writes "Facebook is rolling out some new changes (including groups) that are supposed to liberate user control. But something that might interest Slashdot readers even more is that they now allow you to download all your information from Facebook. That's everything — all your posts, pictures, videos, friend lists, etc. A video from David of the Open Source team at Facebook explains how it will work, although I don't see that option on my profile yet (they are slowly rolling it out). There's not a lot of details yet, but they at least require you to click a link from an e-mail and reenter your password to get this (to avoid spambots harvesting everyone's data and careless use of public computers resulting in data leaks). Perhaps competitors like Diaspora would be interested in using this base information to germinate user seeds?"

7 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. No security concerns here... by Mazzie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hope there is an option to disable this in case your account is hacked and someone wants to download all of your data, oh wait, doh....

    --
    Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
    1. Re:No security concerns here... by PPalmgren · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'll have to give FB credit here where it is due. There have been major complaints that your FB data isn't portable, so they have you stuck in a lock-in. This is clearly a response to those complaints. I'll be the first to hate on FB, and I still don't have an account, but we can't have it both ways bro. This brought me one step closer to signing up.

  2. Re:A nice gesture of openness by sinclair44 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I love how people used to bitch that you couldn't get your data off of Facebook (which wasn't even completely true, given Platform and Connect), but now that they added that exact feature, people are bitching that it will allow spammers to get information or that it trains users in some bad way. Can you give them a fucking break? They are honestly trying to add a feature exactly for the demographic here (most users probably don't care about this level of data portability one bit) and all most people can do is still complain.

    --
    Omnes stulti sunt.
  3. Re:A nice gesture of openness by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dude, it is one of the basic tenets in computer security to not click on links in e-mails that take you to websites where you enter login credentials.

    Those kinds of e-mails are known as phishing and spear phishing attacks. They are very common and very dangerous.

    Facebook has had no end of security problems. Now with the publicity that they will be sending out e-mails that have a link, wait a few days and see what hits in computer security news.

  4. High times from the past by Combatso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FINALLY!!! A way to preserve all the comments from people I havent seen in 20 years telling me we need to smoke a joint together,..

  5. ALL of your data? by davidshewitt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    allow you to download all your information from Facebook

    The question is, does it really allow you to download all of your data? Does it let you download everything anyone has ever posted on your profile? If it did, this could give you some idea of what Facebook has stored about you.

  6. Thank you Facebook by crf00 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thank you Facebook for supporting data portability and not use it as lame anti-competitive lock-in feature like Yahoo and M$ does.. I don't care how other slashdotters think, but you will earn more of my respect as you make your platform more open and release more open source projects. Well done for your effort, keep it on!