AmirWatad.com

Backup Your Facebook Data

This post includes “Thoughts about Facebook and You”, and a link to a great tool to backup your Facebook data.

If you use Facebook, the first thing you should know is: Never trust these bastards! They don’t give a shit on your privacy, they want (and do) own YOUR data, they can “deactivate” your account without a warning, without an explanation, and even without a good reason.

A friend of mine got a letter from Facebook today, informing him that for some reason his Facebook account ws deactivated (I assure you that none of there “reasons” is reasonable). Not only that, they end the message with

“Your violation of Facebook’s standards has resulted in the permanent loss of your account. We will not be able to reactivate your account for any reason. This decision is final.”

WTF?! Final? What could made such decision final? What if he has an explanation? What about the man’s data, photos, posts, contacts?!

Know what? I have a theory.  “Violation of Facebook’s standards” isn’t a good reason to make a decision final. My theory is: The bastards accidentally lost his data, and now they try to cover their a**es using the “Violation of standards”.

You thought that you are using Facebook? You’re wrong, Facebook is using you! Not only using you, they actually OWN YOU!

I learnt a few lessons from this accident:

1. Never trust a corporation when it comes to your data or privacy. If they want, they can erase everything at once, without a warning, or a reason.

2. Never trust Facebook. These are real bastards. Worst than any other corporation. Your data is their money. Ethics is not their strong side.

3. Never use Facebook (or any social network) for storage. Don’t upload content explicitly to Facebook, reliability isn’t their strong side neither. In the worst case, save your data in other websites as well (like Picasa/Flickr for Photos etc..), of course, a local copy in your machine isn’t a bad idea.

4. Backup! Don’t let yourself lose your data without being able to do anything.

There is a great tool to backup your Facebook data, it’s called “Social Safe“, it’s not free but it’s very cheap (3 USD). Really recommended. If you use it on Linux, you can find the backed-up data on:

/home/[username]/.appdata/com.1minus1.socialsafe.*/Local Store/facebook/

5. If you don’t want Facebook to own your own data (Damn it!), don’t upload it to them.

Have a good day

Related posts:

1. Fix Facebook Chat in Firefox 3.5 (Shiretoko) in Ubuntu

Tags: Backup, Facebook, Privacy, Software, Storage, Tools