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Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter partner for ambitious new data project
Today, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter joined to announce a new standards initiative called the Data Transfer Project, designed as a new way to move data between platforms. In a blog post, Google described the project as letting users "transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it."
The current version of the system supports data transfer for photos, mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks, drawing from publicly available APIs from Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Remember the Milk, and SmugMug. Many of those transfers could already be accomplished through other means, but participants hope the project will grow into a more robust and flexible alternative to conventional APIs. In its own blog post, Microsoft called for more companies to sign onto the effort, adding that "portability and interoperability are central to cloud innovation and competition."
Also at 9to5Google.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 23 2018, @09:57AM
How is anonymity affected? Will this new crap make people more secure, or less so? I strongly suspect that signing up for these services, then linking them so that you can transfer some silly pic, will enable each of the corporations to track you more effectively.
As slow as my internet is, I have little problem with uploading what I want to upload, and downloading what I want to download. If I have something on Facebook, that I want to use on Google - I can already do so. No need to link the two accounts to each other.
Who seriously believes that after you have transferred items between a half dozen, or maybe a couple dozen accounts, the surveillance teams won't KNOW that you are the owner of each of them? At the least, their certainty will jump from ~50% to ~99%. Of course, most people won't have any problem with that. Most are happy to be led like sheep.