Ask HN: How did Google grab my Facebook profile picture? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did Google grab my Facebook profile picture?

6 pointsjbm5 comments

About 5 days ago, I went on a short vacation to Osaka with the gf. While there, I uploaded a new profile picture to Facebook from my trip. It isn't particularly embarrassing, but somehow the picture (along with a Facebook stamp) showed up as my profile picture in Gtalk, even though I have never mailed it to myself and have never set it as my profile pic. (My GF text messaged it to me)

How did that happen? My Google and Bing-fu don't seem to bring up an appropriate response. This shows up whether or not I'm logged into Facebook or not.

Screenshot to show what I mean:

http://jawaadmahmood.com/images/Screenshot.png

(Yes that's me browsing it in Chrome.)

I haven't set it as my iPhone picture or anything yet.

With a little work in Firefox I managed to extract the location of the picture. I backed it up to my own server.

http://jawaadmahmood.com/images/facebook-stamp.jpg

Can anyone offer any idea on how this happened?

Facebook app on iPhone will sync your profile pic to your address book which is used as the profile pic for IM. The address book contacts may also be syncing to Gmail and setting it there.

I've been noticing people's IM and email having accompanying profile pics that appear to pick up FB latest pic without the person knowing. I've speculated it's iPhone FB app as a common denominator seems to be owning an iPhone.

Pure speculation.

I wouldn't be surprised if google does a FB graph search on your email address and pulls in the current profile picture.

I remember reading that Google was very interested in getting FB's graph information.

That said, I didn't give them permission to connect my account with the account they found. It seems utterly not like Google; I have an easier time believing my iPhone did something unwanted.

On top of it all, my Facebook information is supposed to be locked down tight. I don't get what's going on.

Your profile pic and basic info is always public via facebook graph. There is no way to change this as far as I know. Welcome to the social web.

http://jawaadmahmood.com/images/Screenshot.png http://jawaadmahmood.com/images/facebook-stamp.jpg

Clickable links.

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