
Undocumented Facebook API to identify friends in photos - vanwilder77
http://narenonit.blogspot.com/2016/06/interesting-undocumented-facebook-api.html
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gcr
Yup yup! This was the screenscraping technique we used to turn Facebook into
an automatic face detector:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04504](https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04504)

It's a giant pain to screenscrape this using 'curl'. If I recall correctly,
the bounding box coordinates I wanted are set as CSS properties inside inline
HTML sent to the client wrapped up in a Javascript string literal as part of
Javascript served to the client as the result of an AJAX call, if memory
serves correctly. To get my screenscraper working, I had to do the AJAX call,
parse the literal javascript, walk the AST to find the string literal I
needed, parse the HTML to find the element I needed, then use the computed CSS
properties. Looks like the author of this post found a much nicer way.

(note: that work wasn't about recognition; it was about just finding the faces
in images, not identifying them)

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tedmiston
I'd really like to read your paper. Everywhere I've found it referenced has a
paywall. Is the full text freely available anywhere?

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sillysaurus3
There's a little-known way to solve that problem for any paper: post the link
to /r/scholar, and you'll get the full pdf within a couple hours.

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mablap
I wouldn't call it 'little-known', it's become quite "famous" in my academic
circles at least.

Just make sure you look up the DOI on libgen.

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bjt2n3904
I've never liked Facebook's "do you want to tag your friend" feature. It's a
loaded question, like... have you stopped beating your wife? However you
answer it, you've given Facebook feedback about their facial recognition.

If I hit yes, I'm tagging friends who might not want to be tagged.
Furthermore, I might end up in the same boat with friends tagging pictures of
me! Either way, I help better Facebook's facial recognition, which unnerves
me.

On the surface, clicking "no" means that they got the facial recognition
wrong. But what am else am I revealing? If the match was 98%, would they infer
that one of us (or both) is concerned about privacy? That we have something to
hide?

The third alternative is to click nothing. The only information that gives
Facebook is that I'm not interested in helping curate their data any more than
I already am.

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programmarchy
So, why do you still use Facebook again? FOMO > privacy?

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bjt2n3904
For now, it's still the simplest and easiest way to keep in touch with my
family and friends. I tried living like I'm a CIA agent for a while, True
Crypting everything, disconnecting from social networks, and I came to one
conclusion:

I'm still just as vulnerable to attack, if not more (ie: trying to host my own
email service). The only difference is I'm markedly more isolated from my
friends. It simply wasn't worth the trade off.

It's similar to people who get ridiculed for stockpiling guns and food in
underground bunkers for the coming War-for-Independence 2.0. Sure, I could
become a "digital prepper" and survive the data-pocalypse--likely at the cost
of my relationships.

It's not like a "10 Cloverfield Lane" lifestyle is particularly appealing to
me, either. I'll live with my friends for now, with only a mild sense of
paranoia.

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johansch
The title (and half of the post) seems to say that there is some undocumented
API that can do more than what the actual Facebook service does with its
regular usage. This does not seem to be the case.

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dimino
This is great! I tended to favor this technique for testing during my time in
QA automation.

People gravitate towards Selenium too quickly, when you really only need
Selenium to test rendering.

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Tinyyy
Is there a way to get the position (coordinates) of the face as well, just
like it is on Facebook?

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fallenshell
This is scary.

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tokenizerrr
It's not that bad.

> I found this API has a limitation it only suggests people in the photo who
> are in your FB friend list

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beatpanda
Yeah, OK, now think about the version Facebook (and thus law enforcement,
intelligence agencies and advertisers) has access to.

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hk__2
Why would FB share any of this with advertisers?

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beatpanda
For money.

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hk__2
They don’t need to share this for money. Advertisers don’t want your data,
they want accurate targeting.

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mcintyre1994
I believe them when they say they don't share, but are you sure about that?
Even advertisers that already have my full name and some data, they wouldn't
want to link with what Google and Facebook have?

To be concrete, my local supermarket and Amazon have my full name, and partial
purchase information (the supermarket via a loyalty card). Both have ways to
contact me with promotions. You don't think they'd like to know what I like on
Facebook (if I did that) or what I search on Google that might suggest
purchase intent?

I think they'd love that data, the platforms just make more money by only
allowing them to target with it.

