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GNOME 3.12 To Plug Into Facebook In New Ways

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  • #11
    Originally posted by board View Post
    It's not about logging in to facebook with gnome. It's about gnome sending requests to facebook.com once you start a session. This might happen in the backround without anybody noticing and should be enough for facebook to know your ip address and when you're using your computer.
    [...]
    Well, if you're a facebook user, don't you log in to facebook via your browser anyway? And thus, they should already have your IP...

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    • #12
      Originally posted by hadrons123 View Post
      Gnome project is being driven deeper and deeper into the ocean of insanity by its obstinate devs.
      The other day I was reading the "bug" report where they decided that the two pane view in Nautilus was "too confusing" and it should be removed, and actually there were a lot of Gnome devs protesting that decision, and it was only 2 of them (the ones that were responsible for it) defending it against all the other dev's logic. However, the ones that made the decision were Nautilus maintainers, and the other ones weren't. I could see those that were protesting trying really really hard to restrain themselves from any insults and such, and actually presenting very valid arguments, but in the end it made no difference as we all know.

      I have absolutely nothing against Gnome, except what they're doing to Nautilus. They're trying really hard to turn it into OSX's Finder which is one of the most useless file managers I've used.

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      • #13
        Blocking Facebook

        Originally posted by oleid View Post
        Well, if you're a facebook user, don't you log in to facebook via your browser anyway? And thus, they should already have your IP...
        If a computer is going to be used online, Facebook will get connection requests from sharing buttons that have infested other websites. If you want to deny Facebook your IP address you need to block social sharing buttonsd in Ghostery and/or NoScript. It's not enough to use a version of GNOME that never connects to them, as they are not the only problem.

        If you do not use Facebook (I do not and never will!), I suggest 127.0.0.1 ing them out in /etc/hosts. If you ever need to access them to follow a link, grab a copy of Torbrowser and add an /etc/ directory to its directory. Drop another /etc/hosts in there without the Facebook block, and now only Torbrowser can connect to Facebook, and Facebook can't get your real IP address from a link, etc. Even if the NSA can sometimes and with great effort use Windows spyware to go around Tor, Facebook can't!

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        • #14
          Originally posted by Luke View Post
          If a computer is going to be used online, Facebook will get connection requests from sharing buttons that have infested other websites. If you want to deny Facebook your IP address you need to block social sharing buttonsd in Ghostery and/or NoScript. It's not enough to use a version of GNOME that never connects to them, as they are not the only problem.

          If you do not use Facebook (I do not and never will!), I suggest 127.0.0.1 ing them out in /etc/hosts. If you ever need to access them to follow a link, grab a copy of Torbrowser and add an /etc/ directory to its directory. Drop another /etc/hosts in there without the Facebook block, and now only Torbrowser can connect to Facebook, and Facebook can't get your real IP address from a link, etc. Even if the NSA can sometimes and with great effort use Windows spyware to go around Tor, Facebook can't!
          What are you trying to tell me? This facebook option for gnome 3.12 is opt-in. If you decide to enable it, and thus make compontents of gnome to log in to facebook, I doubt that they'll get new information - maybe apart from the information that you use the gnome desktop - as facebook users tend to log in to facebook from their current location. They probably won't get a new IP from you, as they got your IP from logins done via your browser or your mobile phone, which is probably behind the same NAT router than your computer.

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          • #15
            It sounds to me like an attempt to empower users with data mining capabilities and making it easier for users to interact with Fb on something closer to their own terms. The actual application of this is probably of value only to people with intermittent Internet connectivity, but the fact that it exists I think is a positive development and hopefully will encourage other technical development with such goals.

            As long as this is an opt-in feature, I do not see what harm it is doing - no one's privacy is being invaded by default - and there are potential benefits to those who use Fb. Those of us who don't use Fb need not be concerned anyway.

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            • #16
              For those claiming this as a reason not to use Gnome Shell: how about you also stop using the evil Thunderbird as that program downloads your entire mail box onto your local machine for the CIA's convenience?! If you are concerned about your Facebook data falling into the CIA's hand then just stop accessing your personal Facebook account from a machine owned by the CIA.

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              • #17
                Not opting in in GNOME won't protect you from websites OWN sharing buttons

                Originally posted by oleid View Post
                What are you trying to tell me? This facebook option for gnome 3.12 is opt-in. If you decide to enable it, and thus make compontents of gnome to log in to facebook, I doubt that they'll get new information - maybe apart from the information that you use the gnome desktop - as facebook users tend to log in to facebook from their current location. They probably won't get a new IP from you, as they got your IP from logins done via your browser or your mobile phone, which is probably behind the same NAT router than your computer.
                You can opt-in or not in GNOME, but Facebook will get info on you whether or not you even have an account with them-unless you affirmatively block the sharing buttons in your browser or block Facebook outright in /etc/hosts.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by Serge View Post
                  It sounds to me like an attempt to empower users with data mining capabilities and making it easier for users to interact with Fb on something closer to their own terms. The actual application of this is probably of value only to people with intermittent Internet connectivity, but the fact that it exists I think is a positive development and hopefully will encourage other technical development with such goals.

                  As long as this is an opt-in feature, I do not see what harm it is doing - no one's privacy is being invaded by default - and there are potential benefits to those who use Fb. Those of us who don't use Fb need not be concerned anyway.
                  Well, there's that, plus people are kind of reading the story very specifically. GNOME doesn't just offer Facebook integration. It has a generic "online accounts" mechanism on which they can implement all kinds of 'online accounts'. In 3.11 the options are Google, ownCloud, Facebook, Flickr, Windows Live and Microsoft Exchange. It can configure various things in GNOME for you for each type of account.

                  Take the ownCloud integration, which I love: you give it your ownCloud server address, username and password, and it adds a bookmark for your OC files to the sidebar in the file chooser and Nautilus, and configures your OC contact list and calendar into evolution-data-server (so you'll get alerts for your appointments and they'll show up in the calendar in the top panel, for instance).

                  If you set up a Flickr account, you can browse your Flickr photos in GNOME Photos, which is also pretty shiny. It's really quite a lot like Android's open 'accounts' system, if you're used to using that, which apps can use to set up all kinds of 'accounts'.

                  This is the kind of awesome feature GNOME is building with all the resources that the controversial changes in GNOME 3 freed up, and it doesn't really get enough press :/

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                  • #19
                    My initial reaction was strongly cautious. But if you already use these social networks (because that's where many real people are) it's surely useful to have an open-source client for them. Not all websites have the best UI, likely require JavaScript (a persistent security risk in web browsers) and such scripts are non-free software you can't easily change.

                    It's also useful to collect and back up local copies of content. Automated scraping gives away less information than a real human's activity would. And you could even run the scrape via Tor (using end-to-end SSL) for this if interactive latency is no longer an issue.

                    The question is whether the social networks in question would allow you such a convenient and presumably ad-free experience.
                    Last edited by stevenc; 16 December 2013, 05:09 PM.

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