For the past couple of weeks, I've been getting occasional IMs and e-mails from what I can only assume are tween-age girls, asking if I work for Facebook. ("I need to talk to Facebook Team about something important, very important.") I mostly ignored the emails, assuming that some version of a "facebook employee" Google search ended up at my site, prompting these kids to think that I work there.

However, the most recent e-mail I received included this line:

"I see your email on Sezzer Gomez's photos. Are you Christopher Finke, the facebook team??"

This piqued my curiousity, so I did a search for "Sezzer Gomez," assuming it was a blogger somewhere that had posted an image that contained my email address. It turns out that "Sezzer" is short for "Selena," as in Disney tween idol Selena Gomez. My search led me to this Facebook page, for "The Official Sezzer Gomez," who, in a bid to prove that she/he is actually Selena Gomez, posted a poorly photoshopped letter from Facebook that purported to be written by me (but strangely, was signed by Mark Howitson, one of Facebook's lawyers). (The letter was photoshopped from the takedown notice I received from Facebook a couple of years ago.)

The contents of the letter are hilarious:

"We've received a complain up straight to your phone, that since you've joined Facebook, all of your accounts got either hacked or deleted for our system."

Sounds legit to me; I know that when I joined Facebook, I too had all of my accounts hacked and/or deleted from Facebook's system. Straight up to my phone!

P.S. "Straight up to my phone" is the new "Word to your mother."

Can you write Facebook or iPhone Apps? Do you like money? If so, have I got a deal for you:

We're looking for some help building out our iPhone and Facebook applications for Mahalo Answers. If you know of any great developers who have done a really solid application for either platform (or who are looking to make a name for themselves doing one), please have them email me at jason@mahalo.com and cc mark@mahalo.com. -- Jason Calacanis, CEO Mahalo.com

Tell them Finke sent you; readers of this blog are known 'round the world to be persons of solid character and intellectual fortitude, so you should definitely identify yourself as such.

Gervase Markham has an insightful post about Facebook's lock-in policy with regards to e-mail. He has a way of writing about the situation that clearly explains the points I'd like to make but can never form into coherent paragraphs.

I received this lovely letter from Facebook's lawyers earlier today. The key points are transcribed below:

"Dear Mr. Finke:

I am writing you concerning the Firefox extensions you posted at:

1. www.chrisfinke.com/addons/facebook-image-to-email and
2. www.chrisfinke.com/addons/facebook-scavenger

These plug-ins are deeply concerning to Facebook because, among other things, they violate Facebook's trademark rights, its Terms of Service, the security of the site and Facebook user privacy. For example, the facebook-image-to-email extensions permits people to circumvent Facebook security measures that protect user privacy and the scavenger extension allows people to harvest data off the site in contravention of the Terms of Service and also infringes upon user privacy. [...]

I insist that you immediately take down the extensions listed above. [...]

Sincerely,

Mark Howitson
Deputy General Counsel"

One of the latest things I've been working on at Mahalo is Mahalo Share. It's a utility that automatically posts links that you want to share to 11 different services: del.icio.us, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, your Tumblr blog, Ma.gnolia, Faves, Pownce, Mahalo, StumbleUpon, and/or Google Bookmarks.

All of this cross-posting is done behind the scenes using various APIs, so there aren't additional popup windows to fill out for each service. We'll be adding more services as they're requested.

Today is not going well for Wikia Search. After launching to less-than-stellar reviews, it has been discovered that they are violating Facebook's TOS with their "Invite from Social Networks" feature.

Here's how the feature works: you select "Facebook" from the list of networks and enter your username and password.

Wikia Search then goes off and scrapes your Facebook profile page for a list of your friends and presents you with a display of these friends (hotlinking their profile images from Facebook's servers, no less), allowing you to check which ones you'd like to invite to Wikia Search:

After you finish with that, it uses your login information again to send a Facebook message to the friends that you checked, appearing to be one written personally by you:

"Christopher sent you a message.

Subject: Search Wikia

I found this great new site called Search Wikia. Go here http://alpha.search.wikia.com/account/addaccount.html to create your account. I am already a member there. Check it out. Christopher Finke"

The problem with all of this is that it blatantly violates these portions of Facebook's TOS:

"You agree not to use the Service or the Site to: [...]

• harvest or collect [...] contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications
• use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Service or the Site"

You'd think that with the whole Plaxo/Robert Scoble fiasco last week, Wikia Search would have considered removing this feature before launch to avoid the inevitable backlash when their users start getting banned from Facebook after using this feature.

At the request of (and under the threats of legal action from) Facebook, I've taken down the Facebook Image-to-Email and Facebook Scavenger Firefox extensions. Facebook claims that any method of automating against their site is a TOS violation, although if that were true, simply using a Web browser to convert their raw HTML code into readable text and images would constitute a violation.

I maintain that both tools provided a useful service that Facebook has neglected to provide itself, but I will not continue to make them available via this website. Facebook has also confirmed to me via e-mail that it will not offer users the option of having their e-mail address displayed in plain clickable text, under the guise of protecting the users' privacy. (E-mail addresses are already visible as images, but you can't click on them to send the user a message. This has the serendipitious side-effect of making Facebook's own in-site messaging system a much more attractive method of communication for Facebook users.)

A couple of things to note: while I obviously cannot retrieve any copies of these extensions that have already been downloaded, Facebook feels quite strongly that the usage of Image-to-Email and Scavenger violates their Terms of Service. They cannot stop you from using it, but they can (in theory) test for the presence of either extension and ban you from their site if you have them installed. Contact me privately via e-mail if you're concerned about your usage being detected in this manner.

I've updated Facebook Scavenger (a Firefox extension that saves a backup your Facebook friends' profile data) to add vCard export support. You can download this new version (1.1) from the Facebok Scavenger homepage, and you might want to hurry. A little birdie told me that this handy tool might not be available for too much longer.

Earlier today, I mentioned that it wouldn't be out of the question to write a Firefox extension that would grab profile data about your Facebook friends as you view their profiles so that you could take that data to another service.

Given that, allow me to introduce Facebook Scavenger. It's a Firefox extension that saves data (including e-mail addresses) from Facebook profiles that you view and then allows you to export that data in CSV format.

Note that this extension does not violate Facebook's TOS since it does not automatically load pages to retrieve profile data; rather, it reformats data that you have already seen on pages that you yourself loaded. Robert Scoble could have saved himself a lot of trouble (and avoided a lot of that nasty publicity that I'm sure he hates ;-) had he just used this extension for a few days.

Had a great idea while watching ScobleShow.

5,000 of Scoble's friends, at $10 a pop means $50,000 in revenue for me. Submit your orders in the comment section below.