Does Facebook Limit Range of Functionality Available to New Apps? - facebook-fql

The "Include recent activity stories" migration setting, for instance, is not available on a new app. Is the new setting mentioned below restricted to certain app types?
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/592/
I have a 'website' application that doesn't expose this setting in the Advanced section.
It seems Facebook enforces a 'graduated licencing' program for apps where they start off with limited functionality but gradually gain more rights as some factors (i.e. age, # of users, reputation of owners, etc) improve?

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How can we collect the facebook group request data using a chrome extension?

Is there any way that we can collect data by asking the questions when someone wants to join the group. And we collect the data when we approve the joining request or sometimes programmatically?
Could you please elaborate on how we can use Facebook GRAPH API for fulfilling the above purpose?
Check out GroupTrack CRM...it's a CRM that is integrated into Facebook via a Chrome Extension. It does exactly what you asked (one click to approve individual or all pending members while also saving their answers to your questions and adding them to the CRM), along with a ton of other awesome stuff.
Keep notes and tags, track sales funnel stages, bookmark posts and comments, set follow up tasks with reminders, and more across unlimited Groups. Everything is synced in real time with a web app as well, so you can access your contact information from anywhere, plus it can be set up to integrate with external systems (Google Sheets, Streak, and Kartra at the moment, but many more to come).
Lastly, GroupTrack supports teams, so if you run a Group with other admins, you can share access to the CRM and have everything kept in sync. It's awesome!

Business verification required as part of my app review

I was asked by facebook to submit my app for an app review to get further access to some fields in their Graph API. I have done so and today I got a message from them:
The permissions and features review for (my app name) is complete.
Next, we'll verify your business. To do this, you may need to provide
documentation like a business license or utility bill.
The problem is that I have no company and therefore no documents to prove that I have one. I have created and launched this app as an individual and I just want access to few fields from their Graph API.
Please what should I do? I wanted to write them directly, but I haven't found something through what I can contact them.
New limitations
This is the new Facebook's policy. It looks like access to for example user_friends will be now limited to companies which can afford to implement advanced security systems.
Their requirements seem to be similar to the new European regulation - GPDR. These breaking changes are most likely caused by recent lawsuit related with Facebook & Cambridge Analytica and Mark Zuckerberg's promises during his testimony in Congress.
Facebook requires now to verify your business for some permissions:
If you don't pass app or business review, you will loose access to these APIs after August 1, 2018.
Influence on mobile applications
It's a really bad news for small applications, most likely it will kill Facebook integration.
They don't even provide any form to contact and discuss it, when you click on "support" you are forwarded to support page for Facebook Analytics.
If you have a small company and creating apps for fun, their terms are very demanding and could cause a huge problems for your business in the future. Therefore you should decide if it's worth to risk in exchange of displaying friends.
Interesting things about their requirements
When you start business verification process, it asks about company details, if you provide these, you will be asked to sign a contract with Facebook. I encourage to read carefully their terms, because they ask you to:
provide them from time to time upon a written request access to your books, records, agreements, services, facilities etc. which relate to user data in order to audit your security mechanisms and procedures,
cover review costs and expenses if they detect any noncompliance with their terms or security requirements.
Good luck to small apps...
References
Facebook Login Changelog - here you can check which permission requires app review, business verification and contract,
contract with Facebook is not published, you will receive it when you start a business verification,
short overview of Mark Zuckerberg's promises,
post on my blog with this answer,
from Facebook Login Changelog:
In order to help protect people's data, we're now requiring that an increased number of permissions go through the App Review process. For certain permissions, we are also requiring business verification and a contract between your business and Facebook. Businesses can be verified by providing forms of documentation including utility bills, business licenses, certificates of formation, articles of incorporation, tax ID numbers, and others. The contract introduces additional security requirements and other provisions around data.
August 6, 2019 - Update
Finally, the time has come. Permissions were supposed to stop working on August 1, 2018, but actually Facebook has given one extra year. Yesterday I received this e-mail:
As of September 4, 2019, MY_APP_NAME will no longer have access to the
following permissions or features:
user_friends

Facebook is asking me to verify my business but I'm not a business [duplicate]

I was asked by facebook to submit my app for an app review to get further access to some fields in their Graph API. I have done so and today I got a message from them:
The permissions and features review for (my app name) is complete.
Next, we'll verify your business. To do this, you may need to provide
documentation like a business license or utility bill.
The problem is that I have no company and therefore no documents to prove that I have one. I have created and launched this app as an individual and I just want access to few fields from their Graph API.
Please what should I do? I wanted to write them directly, but I haven't found something through what I can contact them.
New limitations
This is the new Facebook's policy. It looks like access to for example user_friends will be now limited to companies which can afford to implement advanced security systems.
Their requirements seem to be similar to the new European regulation - GPDR. These breaking changes are most likely caused by recent lawsuit related with Facebook & Cambridge Analytica and Mark Zuckerberg's promises during his testimony in Congress.
Facebook requires now to verify your business for some permissions:
If you don't pass app or business review, you will loose access to these APIs after August 1, 2018.
Influence on mobile applications
It's a really bad news for small applications, most likely it will kill Facebook integration.
They don't even provide any form to contact and discuss it, when you click on "support" you are forwarded to support page for Facebook Analytics.
If you have a small company and creating apps for fun, their terms are very demanding and could cause a huge problems for your business in the future. Therefore you should decide if it's worth to risk in exchange of displaying friends.
Interesting things about their requirements
When you start business verification process, it asks about company details, if you provide these, you will be asked to sign a contract with Facebook. I encourage to read carefully their terms, because they ask you to:
provide them from time to time upon a written request access to your books, records, agreements, services, facilities etc. which relate to user data in order to audit your security mechanisms and procedures,
cover review costs and expenses if they detect any noncompliance with their terms or security requirements.
Good luck to small apps...
References
Facebook Login Changelog - here you can check which permission requires app review, business verification and contract,
contract with Facebook is not published, you will receive it when you start a business verification,
short overview of Mark Zuckerberg's promises,
post on my blog with this answer,
from Facebook Login Changelog:
In order to help protect people's data, we're now requiring that an increased number of permissions go through the App Review process. For certain permissions, we are also requiring business verification and a contract between your business and Facebook. Businesses can be verified by providing forms of documentation including utility bills, business licenses, certificates of formation, articles of incorporation, tax ID numbers, and others. The contract introduces additional security requirements and other provisions around data.
August 6, 2019 - Update
Finally, the time has come. Permissions were supposed to stop working on August 1, 2018, but actually Facebook has given one extra year. Yesterday I received this e-mail:
As of September 4, 2019, MY_APP_NAME will no longer have access to the
following permissions or features:
user_friends

Privacy policy on Facebook tab

I received an e-mail from Facebook that i need to include a privacy policy in my Facebook tab. I thought privacy policy's were only needed in Facebook Apps.
Were can i find an example of a privacy policy?
Simply put, the reason for Facebook's strict requirements are mostly because of them wanting to demonstrate that they do everything to educate their users "we told the user to have a privacy policy". Therefore you receiving that email may not necessarily be related to you doing anything related to privacy.
In theory it's still possible to gather data from a tab/page with input forms.
iubenda has been specialising in this kind of problem with a dedicated privacy policy generator for Facebook apps and a hosting service for privacy policies built in: http://iubenda.com/facebook/
There's also a basic free version to be had for the general privacy policy here http://iubenda.com (edit: I haven't pointed out that the free version only works for web policies, as commented on by one user)
(disclosure: I work with the iubenda team to keep this being the best possible tool out there)
I would recommending using http://termsfeed.com/free/privacy-policy-generator
in preference to http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/free-privacy-policy-generator.php since the latter has a terms of use that includes:
Permission is granted ... for the sole purpose of placing an order with FreePrivacyPolicy.com or purchasing FreePrivacyPolicy.com products. Any other use, ... is strictly prohibited, unless authorized by FreePrivacyPolicy.com.
Sorry I couldn't send a link to their terms of use, it appeared as a javascript popup, at the end of their wizard questionaire.
http://www.generateprivacypolicy.com/
I use this to create a privacy policy for just several seconds.
I got the same mail aswell and I don't really understand why. I used this one to create it: http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/free-privacy-policy-generator.php
Do you gather any data (forms, etc.) from that particular tab? They may simply have changed the requirements.
You should try to re-write any privacy policy depending the type of data you gather (or not).
You can also use the following from Termsfeed (free generator): http://termsfeed.com/free/privacy-policy-generator
Simple Facebook features like Page Plugin (which used to be called Tabs) do not require a Privacy Policy or TOS. The essential fact I found when when trying to work this out was in the FAQ. You don't need an "app," or even a developer account. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/faqs says it. That means you don't need an app Privacy Policy or TOS.
A problem arises when you are logged in as a developer and click "Get code" in the wizard at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/page-plugin/. It gives you the developer version of the javascript SDK. It has the line js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12&appId=...&autoLogAppEvents=1', with your most recent appId filled in.
The workaround is to log out of Facebook before using the wizard. Then you will get the correct code which does not require Privacy/TOS: js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.12'.
I found an excellent one (which even generates and hosts your privacy policy) here by privatychoice.org

how do i track a users activity online

We are building a system that seeks to calculate and score the value of information and users of information - based on the interaction between the two.
To do this, we need to track and measure these interactions. We are working on different ways - from connecting your social services and monitoring them (hard to scale and requires very patient users happy to connect services) to explicit tracking having a bookmarklet ala digg that user can trigger whenever she is on a piece of information (basically, content) that she wants included in her score.
What we'd really like is a tool that could do something like;
monitor all activity of a person across all networks (read, watch, comment, post, tweet, author, etc) and actively sit in the users browser and 'listen and report' back to HQ anytime a defined activity takes place.
Suggestions?
If you want to monitor the Social network activities for ex. Facebook, you need to take the authentication from the user like read/friends list etc. and fetch the updates from facebook with in specific interval of time and report same to HQ.
The same thing you need to report for other networking sites.
Each network sites may have different APIs you need collect and take the permission of the users (like signin).
Hope it helps.