Facebook just updated its photo and video portability tool with support for two more third party services: Dropbox and Koofr. The purpose of the third party services support is to send data via encrypted transfer.
Facebook launched its photos and videos portability tool last year in December to help users port their Facebook media directly to Google photos initially, and later on, access to the tool spread to more markets.
In total now, there are three options for Facebook users to transfer their Facebook media elsewhere. A spokesman of Facebook also confirmed that the company is working with other services as well, so there will be more partnership announcements in the coming months.
The transfer tool by Facebook is based on a code that was developed as a result of Facebook's participation in the Data Transfer Project. The project was a collaborative effort among other big tech companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and twitter.
Facebook's transfer tool works by visiting the 'your Facebook information' menu from where users can select the option of 'transfer a copy of your photos and videos’. Before initiating the transfer, Facebook will ask to reenter password. Users can then select the destination service of their choice, from Google Photos, Dropbox and Koofr. The transfer will begin after reentering the password for the second time. A notification will be sent by Facebook to confirm the completion of the transfer. The tool works for both desktop and the Facebook app.
Koofr is a small EU-based cloud service provider and its addition to Facebook's list of supported services for the transfer tool is something that stands out, as Dropbox and Google are already familiar names. A Facebook spokesperson stated that the company reached out to Koofr after one of the staffers suggested Koofr as an EU cloud storage solution.
There is, however, more curiosity around whether Facebook will launch the direct media portability tool to its photo sharing service, Instagram. A spokesperson of Facebook commented on this concern, saying that the company is currently focused on portability tools on its own platform, but is looking forward to expand the feature to other apps in the future.
Moreover, Facebook called out lawmakers in a blogpost while discussing the new destinations of its portability tool. The company insisted that lawmakers come up with ''clearer rules'' to govern portability, so people can trust data portability features that Facebook builds. The tech giant stated that ''the internet needs clearer rules about what kinds of data should be portable and who is responsible for protecting that data as it moves to different services.''.
The company also encouraged other companies to join the Data Transfer Project to push the data portability innovation forward and expand options for people.
Facebook also released a white paper on the subject of portability last year, that discussed privacy and security trade-offs in a bid to influence regulatory thinking around requirements on direct data transfers.
