Hacker News Reader

Comment by njoglekar | Hacker News Reader

Hey guys, we actually have a survey after the fb login for that reason (I have few interests on my FB profile). And we WONT write on your wall under any circumstances.

Lastly, for now wanted to dodge anonymous signups. Won't be much fun to set you up with people that are not real. Hope you give it a shot.

View on HN

> And we WONT write on your wall under any circumstances.

Being able to trust strangers is nice, but not needing to is even better.

If I recall correctly, apps must explicitly ask permission (above and beyond the login) and authorizaton which just gives access to your "basic information".

Oftentimes you can deny the post ability. You can't tell until you arrive at the screen, but if you don't click okay, nobody's posting anything on your wall.

Yeah, until Facebook quietly changes how that works and gives all sorts of new permissions to apps you've already authorized with.

That's the real problem here: Facebook has a history of wanting to expose as much personal information as possible, including exposing information that was previously not exposed without warning. I don't necessarily distrust the OP's business today, nor do I necessarily disagree with the permission settings I can set today. What I don't trust is Facebook's future changes to those permission settings, nor what the OP's business is going to do when/if it has more access to my information than it used to have.

You can remove the app. Its not permissions for life.

That does nothing to prevent the app from retaining the information they obtained using the Facebook API during the time they were authorized (yes it's against the TOS to do so, but it's completely unenforceable).

But the information they would retain would be the same information they'd have if you'd signed up with email and manually entered information.

Not really, basic permissions on facebook includes your friend list.

That's not true at all. If I enter information manually, then the site has exactly the information I've chosen to give it, no more and no less, until I decide to provide more. That is most likely not the same information I've shared through Facebook. But if the site gathers information from my Facebook account, then it gets whatever Facebook chooses to give it; the choice is not under my control.

If Facebook had a history of strong privacy protection and strict opt-in policy to information sharing, this wouldn't be so bad. But since Facebook has the completely opposite history, including Zuck coming right out and saying that he would prefer all Facebook user info to be shared, I'm not going to trust Facebook to keep whatever I want private private.

"Basic information" on Facebook includes your friendlist.

https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info-on-other

To echo @adambard, I would've given this a shot as well if you hadn't requested my FB login. I'm very protective of using my FB credentials on a site I don't know much about (probably an irrational fear, but I know I'm not alone.)

You will get more signups if you offer alternatives, vs. trying to convince people you won't abuse the FB privileges. Just something to consider.

I don't have a Facebook account. I deleted it years ago. I guess I can't make any new amigos on your site.

Oh, I forgot! I DO have a fake one that I use for development. I guess I can just use that...

Have you seriously not seen plenty of obviously fake Facebook accounts on there?

Sorry, but even if I were willing to sign up via Facebook, I wouldn't do it just so that you can pretend that you're making sure that only real people are signing up.

We don't think it eliminates the problem but for us it helps quite a bit.

Either you put a demo and it interests me enough I might remotely consider logging with Facebook ... maybe. Or you accept fake accounts and be thankful for a lot more feedback from HN. By being greedy you have more to loose than to win.

I really don't understand the Facebook deepthroating trend. But feel free to ignore the advice that have been repeated here times and times again.

What sort of demo would make you likely to log in with Facebook? Screenshots of people you might meet?

Not the OP, but pictures of people tend to be a negative signal to me, as though someone's trying to use stock photos of faces to lend unwarranted legitimacy to their site.

I think most people who are concerned about "people that are not real" on a site like this are concerned about the site owners creating fake user accounts and fake activity to (a) make the site seem more active than it is, and (b) drive users to a subscription plan in order to see "who's trying to contact me".

Well, it would be hard to fake activity on a site like this since the activity is something that happens in real life.

I don't know how your site works, since I haven't gone past the home page. My comment was based on a typical "dating" site's behavior:

You can sign up for free. Almost immediately, you start to get emails, instant messages, flirts, matches, etc. You can see some info from the profiles of the people supposedly trying to make contact with you, but you can't see what they're saying or provide any kind of response unless you subscribe. If you do subscribe, more often than not you'll discover that all of that contact activity was from fake accounts that never respond to anything you send them. By that point the site already has your payment, so it's too late to do anything but cancel before the next automated payment occurs.

I'm not saying your site works like this; I hope it doesn't. I'm just saying that this kind of thing is why users of a site like yours would be concerned about fake accounts on the site.

makes sense, for more info check out the about page

Ah, I didn't see the "How does it work" link, because I use Ghostery to block trackers, and the Ghostery popup in the upper right was hiding the link.

Only a small percentage of facebook users are actually real... Seriously though I think you might be over concerned about spam in the short term. If the site gets popular then it certainly could be an issue, but that's always a big if.

There are still plenty of security concerns here. People like to be anonymous and disconnected in many ways. For example, I can see who on my facebook friends list uses your app:

https://www.facebook.com/browse/friends_using_app/?app_id=14...

> Lastly, for now wanted to dodge anonymous signups

Well, the only way I would log in with facebook is with a freshly created "anonymous" fb account for this purpose only.

How about supporting https://login.persona.org/ ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com