Facebook blocks data-exporting again

Less than a week after it was released, a second tool offering to export contact data from Facebook has been blocked by the social networking juggernaut. But the maker of the new tool, Open-Xchange, adopted a defiant stance and vowed the story "is not over with by a long shot." "Honestly speaking, we were very much surprised to see that Facebook yesterday disabled the API key to the free tool we built last week that allows contact information of your friends to be exported our of Facebook," Open-Xchange CEO Rafael Laguna said in a blog post. The firm had developed a tool on ox.io that extracts data from a Facebook user's friend list. It exports the data into a format that can be used for Google's Gmail address book. Google is behind the upcoming social networking site Google+, which is touted as a looming major threat to Facebook. Earlier, Facebook blocked a hack by Mohamed Mansour that allowed Google's Chrome browser to export Friends from Facebook into Gmail's address book. Laguna also insisted his firm did not violate any terms of Facebook, after Facebook wrote him to explain why it blocked the tool. He quoted the Facebook letter as saying it disabled his company's tool for the following violations:

• You cannot use a user's friend list outside of your application, even if a user consents to such use, but you can use connections between users who have both connected to your application.
• A user's friends' data can only be used in the context of the user's experience on your application.

"We are not aware of violating anything. We are using your API to extract the last name and first name fields. We are not parsing or scraping the email address. That same data is available at your site under 'Account->Account Settings->Download Your Information' in the resulting friends.html file," Laguna said in his reply to Facebook. "Stay tuned – this story is not over with by a long shot," he added. — TJD, GMA News