I'm using Facebook Connect along with the Facebook Graph API to fetch user's email addresses when they sign up to my site. This works perfectly over 99% of the time but sometimes when I query the Graph API for a user's data after they have given my site permission, including the email permission, Facebook returns a large number (eg. 14036774009) as the person's email address.
So far, the numbers are always different and are always 11 digits long and all the other user data from the Graph API is valid. I've never been able to replicate this problem with a Facebook account that I control.
In some ways, the large number reminds me of the random proxy email addresses that Facebook generates for people who opt to give 3rd party apps a forwarding address instead of their main address (the proxy addresses look something like this: apps+148742679521093.617890126.8a2b26037e1ccd06bb81aaec5925f4c7#proxymail.facebook.com)
Can anyone explain this behavior or a way to fix it (and always get valid email addresses)?
It's a bug. Has already been reported to Facebook:
https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/298946933534016
It seems to be happening even when using the graph explorer - https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer, but only for some users. In my case about 0.2% of the time.
So until it is fixed you have 2 options:
If Facebook gives you a bad email value, ask the user for his/her email manually.
Save the long lived access token and try again periodically to see if you get the correct email back.
Are you still using the old auth dialog somehow?
The ability to provide a proxy email address is only in the old auth dialog
This happens for people who sign up to Facebook with their mobile phone number and the number returned is just that.
There is no option to get at the users' email address because he may not have given it to Facebook yet.
Related
How would I get the email address associated with an active Facebook App ID, if all the usual methods (such as here, and here) don't return any email information with my creator-uid?
(I simply don't get the email field returned, even when I specifically request it as per here. I don't think this is a case of this as I didn't get an "App has no owner" error, or any error whatsoever.)
I've also tried this, but I'm in a catch-22 as I can't log in to select the application first.
I'm looking for the owner email address, so I can log in to make administrative updates following graph API updates.
Other specifics:
I get the following when I hit the Graph API via: https://graph.facebook.com/{my-app-id}?access_token={my-access-token} or https://graph.facebook.com/{my-app-id}?access_token={my-access-token}&fields=email
{
"name": "my-name",
"id": "my-creator-uid" }
I've tried to recover my FB account using all emails I can think of, but FB says 'no account exists' for each that I try. (This is a data-analytics corporate account being used to gather data for 12+ months, so I can't simply create a new account/app ID and start using that instead, as app-scoped user IDs will change.)
I've also tried viewing https://www.facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/{my-creator-uid}/ and https://www.facebook.com/{my-creator-uid}/ from another company FB account, but both get:
Sorry, this content isn't available right now The link you followed
may have expired, or the page may only be visible to an audience
you're not in.
What else would you suggest? What might have happened? I've tried to contact Facebook, but that search led me to this forum post, so I'm here. Thank you in advance for your help.
This is not a programming question, try to get in touch with the Facebook Team, if you are working with Facebook paid services (like Advertising) you might have an account representative that can accelerate the things a little bit (But this can be a really long wait).
A more realistic option is to create a new profile and an new app, also your application will be reviewed as well (Take a little less time than previous option).
I have a project where I am using Selenium to test the Facebook auth. I created a Facebook app, created a test user inside this app and created some tests using Facebook login. Until now, it was working. But during the last two weeks something changed in Facebook and my tests are failing. It is due to interface changes in permissions dialog (I am targeting the button by his id). The second problem is that I don't get the email address from Facebook test user but a proxy email which is longer than 75 characters (my db field length is hardcoded in framework I am using).
If I log in as a regular user, it is working correctly and I get this permission box:
But when I log in as the test user I created (via 'switch to' in app's developer roles), I get this box:
I tested it ~2 weeks ago and this was yet working. Today it is changed. So my questions:
How to get back the old permissions box for test users?
How can I get the real email address and not the proxy?
Thanks!
I experienced the same problem with the Auth Dialog. I tried it with some old and new apps with various settings including March/Apr. 2013 Breaking Changes enabled/disabled, but it didn't help.
However, I guess I can help you with the email problem. When you login as a test user and go to account settings page, you will see the test user's primary email addres. By default this should be a really long one like the image I attached.
Facebook Platform returns this primary email address. If you pass the Auth Dialog with your test user account and see the privacy setting page, you will find the default primary email address is shared with the app. You have to provide a new email address for the test user and set the new one as primary email address via account setting page.
Why is the Login Dialog different with a test user?
With your test user, you can see the future of login dialogs. In fact, this isn't "not working" but this is an update which was unveiled on December 2012. Let me quote:
Our Login dialogs have undergone a redesign to make it easier to
understand permissions that apps request. We've simplified
presentation and have also updated our language for greater clarity.
“Basic info” has been renamed to “public profile and friend list,” to
reflect what what is being shared. Apps accessing your public profile
get your name, profile picture, age range, gender, language, country
and other public information.
Source: Providing People Greater Clarity and Control, developers.facebook.com/blog
The reason why you don't meet this update with a regular user, is that Facebook doesn't use to update everyone at the same time. They partially launch updates depending on the country, the type of account or some other parameters I ignore.
Example of a partial update (unified_message FQL table) dedicated to developer accounts:
We are providing early access to this API for registered developer
accounts only until the new messaging system is broadly available. You
should use the message table for production applications at the
current time.
In our case, we now know that test users can access to the update, but it is also said:
We have already launched many of these improvements as part of our
iOS6 integration and are now rolling them out more broadly.
About proxy emails
In fact, proxy emails are a way for any users to keep their real email anonymous. You have to consider proxy emails.
When joining an app, the user can choose between a real email and a proxy email:
Other thing you need to expect are users who didn't validate their account when connecting to your app, a case which is possible as described here and here.
Then, why do test users give back a proxy email? Because test users (being bots and having fake emails) didn't validate their emails.
You see that in at least 3 cases (and finally, test users are a good example), you need to handle these proxy emails. They are incidentally or accidentally met by developers and they can't be neglected. For your case, you can still try to disallow tests users who have a proxy email from accessing your app. But you should accept them and shouldn't force them to share their original e-mail addresses. A better solution is that you validate the test users emails:
Connect to the test user account that gives a proxy email
Add an email address (password needed here),
Go to the email mailbox and click on the validation link,
Set the new email address as primary,
The test user should now give his original email and not a proxy anymore!
In my physical store, I have a few tablets available in which I use to obtain shoppers' email addresses. I'll leave them up on a simple web page where they just enter their email address to join my companies email mailing list.
I would like to add the ability for these individuals to also 'Like' my company on Facebook without actually logging into Facebook. My thoughts are that they will not want to log into Facebook via a shared machine due to security concerns and also the added time to log on will deter them from even adding their email address to begin with.
Here is what i am thinking...I was hoping to send the 'Like' update to their account based on the email address that they provided without actually loggin on. Can this be achieved?
Thanks for your time.
No, the user must be logged in to send requests to facebook on their behalf
I am working on a project related to both school and work where I would like to combine data from a college entrance application (which includes email address) and Facebook data, even a minimum amount of data, such as number of "friends" or any other public info they've put out there. Am I correct that you can't really programmatically search Facebook by email address? Feel free to make any suggestions.
Thanks
You can search Facebook by email address, you just can't reliably search Facebook by email address.
For instance, you can make this query with a user access token:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?type=user&q=USER#EMAIL.NET&access_token=TOKEN
I've tried this with a few people I know who are on Facebook, where I know their email address, but I am not friends with them. (Mostly my wife's friends).
In my testing, only about 20% of these queries return a Facebook user_id. I'm not sure if they don't have the email I know linked to their user account or if they have their privacy set to restrict their email address.
Once you have their user_id, you can access all their public information at
https://graph.facebook.com/USER_ID
You don't need an access token to get this information.
Facebook Graph API.
I am requesting email permission and it works all fine except for some users, the json does not return email field. I am not sure why this happens. The code is same and it works great for all users, returns email field except 1 in 100 or so users where it does not have this field in json. All other fields are there.
Has anyone faced this problem before ??
I checked the facebook privacy settings and there is nothing that prevents email from coming in json if user grants email access to facebook app, yet this is happening to me. I searched the net and no one else seems to be facing this issue.
Any hint would be appreciated
Never makes assumptions about what Facebook will send you, never expect every field to be present and never expect a Graph request to do what you want.
Facebook sometimes do things like this, a missing field here and there, a cryptic and unexpected error somewhere else… While it can be no harm be aware that it also happens in critial places like in the signed_request sent when an user launches an app.
You also have to know that 'your' Facebook may not be everyone else's Facebook. They do geographic and somewhat random deployments of their code. An option to hide your e-mail address to every application could appear for someone but not for someone else, without any particular reason.
Considering your particular issue, I doubt there is an option to hide you e-mail address to an app who has the mail permission, but if the permission is not mandatory someone could accept your app and cherry-pick optional permissions later.
I dealing with this issue recently. Apparently, facebook only promise to return "valid email" address. Some account do not having any "valid email". They can be account who using phone for validation, or account that email is expired. I tried with a account which email, lets said "xxxx.gmail.com" is expired, when query that account graph, i unable to get any email shows(by using facebook debugger). However, when i login xxxx.gmail.com in gmail, and re-activate the email, and i query graph api again for the account, it able to return me email.
had the same issue for a while, which caused some heavy head banging against the wall.
in my case the issue was due to the fact that some users have unverified emails or no email at all (when signing up via mobile/SMS).
in this case facebook will not provide an email on the response.
from the facebook docs:
note: this field will not be returned if no valid email address is
available for the user
sources:
https://github.com/mkdynamic/omniauth-facebook/issues/61
Register with Facebook sometimes doesn't provide email (sebastian's and colm's answers)
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/
The only thing that worked for me was requesting for permitted fields through the API:
FB.api("/me", {fields: "email,..."}, callback)
This totally fixed the issue.
Hope that helps.