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Bug 610518 - Empathy reveals private email address to contacts when connecting to facebook chat
Empathy reveals private email address to contacts when connecting to facebook...
Status: RESOLVED NOTGNOME
Product: empathy
Classification: Core
Component: Accounts
2.29.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: empathy-maint
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2010-02-20 10:02 UTC by Martin West
Modified: 2010-02-20 11:03 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Description Martin West 2010-02-20 10:02:53 UTC 
my email address is only visible to me in facebook on the web.

empathy kindly used it as my default alias and broadcast it to everyone.

facebook legitimately provides information about the user who logs in. Empathy then displays this private information to all my contacts. If Empathy cannot tell whether the email address associated with a facebook account is private, it should not use it

expected: use Anonymous as default alias if there really is nothing else available. What about my name?!

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Feb 18 06:52:15 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/empathy
Package: empathy 2.29.90-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-13.18-generic
SourcePackage: empathy
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-13-generic x86_64

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/523633
Comment 1 Felix Kaser 2010-02-20 10:42:54 UTC 
As far as I know this is not an empathy issue! Facebook should not use your email address as alias if you set it as private! Why should facebook provide this information to empathy? How can we decide whether you like to have your email address as alias or not?

Anyways, how did you add your facebook account? using your first.lastname@chat.facebook.com? Have you set your full name and username in facebook account settings?
Comment 2 Martin West 2010-02-20 10:47:11 UTC 
I agree that the situation isn't perfect, but it is definitely now the responsibility of Empathy to err on the side of caution if it cannot divine the privacy status of my email address. Please consider defaulting to something else, or prompting the user specifically.
Comment 3 Felix Kaser 2010-02-20 11:03:19 UTC 
I'm not sure if I understand you...

Facebook is the service which provides chat communication. Empathy is just the client that uses the information Facebook provides. If Facebook tells us to show your email address as alias we do so, because we cannot know if you want it so or not.

Facebook is so restrictive that you cannot set your alias from the client (as far as I know). This means we can only display what facebook sends to us.

Can you confirm that this happens only with empathy and not with other clients? Because I'm sure this is a facebook issue. Please contact the facebook developers.