portability framework as the first phase of ‘Data Transfer
Project[1],’ an initiative the
company launched last year in collaboration with Google, Apple,
Microsoft, and Twitter.
Facebook today announced[2]
a new feature that will allow its users to transfer their Facebook
photos and videos to their Google Photos accounts—directly and
securely without needing to download and reupload it.
The feature is only available to Facebook users in Ireland for
now, as a test, and expected to be available to the rest of the
world in early 2020.
This new Facebook feature is built using the Data Transfer Project[3]
(DTP), a universal data import/export protocol that aims to give
users more control over their data and let them quickly move it
between online services or apps whenever they want.
“If a user wants to switch to another product or service because
they think it is better, they should be able to do so as easily as
possible,” the project website says.
“Practical tools that let users backup or archive important
information, organize information within multiple accounts, recover
from account hijacking, and retrieve data from deprecated services
all work to improve user security.”
been designed to let any service easily convert their proprietary
data and authentication formats into a common format that must be
usable by others.
- Data Models
- Adapters (Data and Authentication)
- Task Management Libraries
It uses existing industry-standard infrastructure and authorization
mechanisms, such as OAuth and REST, in a way that even hosting
entities do not have access to a user’s data either in transit or
at rest.
“Rather than expecting every company to build its own system
from scratch, this open source framework allows them to share any
improvements in the framework as well as adapters and data models,”
Facebook said.
service providers, listed below, supporting five different types of
consumer data, including photos, mail, tasks, contacts, and
calendar.
- Microsoft
- Imgur
- Spotify
- Flickr
- Remember the Milk
- SmugMug
- Solid web decentralization project
- Deezer music streaming service
- Mastodon self-hosted social networking service
For now, Facebook is only testing the transfer of photos and videos
to Google photos, but the company is also expecting to add support
for more services and data types in the future.
look at several factors. It’s important that the system request
only the permissions required for the task at hand. Access to the
destination service should end once the transfer is complete.”
“Finally, transfers should only be created by the owner of the
account. In order to verify this, we ask people to re-enter their
password before initiating a transfer. We also send an email to the
registered account once a transfer has begun, which allows people a
chance to stop the transfer if they change their mind or do not
recognize the request.”
Besides all good things, as suspected before, the project could
have some serious implications for smaller service providers
participating in the project, making it easier for their customers
to leave and join services from popular brands with lucrative
offers or free services.
References
- ^
Data Transfer Project
(thehackernews.com) - ^
announced
(engineering.fb.com) - ^
Data Transfer Project
(datatransferproject.dev)
Read more http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheHackersNews/~3/EtDQYezXtBc/facebook-google-photos-data.html