Personal Data Import/Export
Tom Scott
Public
Seen by 196
[Edited by Fla]
This discussion is about account migration between pods.
Current github issue
Summary: We all agree this is an important feature, but it's hard to deal with considering privacy and security issues.
Tom Scott Fri 11 Jan 2013 4:04AM
@seantilleycommunitymanager in terms of pod-to-pod migrating, could we have the pods actually do the transfer and migration? the user would never actually touch the .ZIP archive (though they could optionally download it), rather the pods would facilitate all of the archive creation, unpacking and loading of data.
Sean Tilley Fri 11 Jan 2013 5:50AM
@tomscott That's exactly what I was thinking of. There could be an option in Settings to move to a different pod, where you could type in the URL of your Diaspora pod and authenticate with it like it's an app.
This would push your posts, contacts, Aspects, and bio to the new pod, and your old account would simply become a redirect to your current one.
Of course, that's all easier said than done, but from an end user's standpoint, it'd be very easy to migrate by just typing in a URL and clicking a button.
Louigi Verona Fri 11 Jan 2013 6:20AM
I think this is a key feature for Diaspora, as a decentralized network.
Speaking about a quick approach, the possibility of abuse that Sean Tilley voiced - how possible is it?
Robin Stent - Outreach Fri 11 Jan 2013 8:26AM
really glad to hear this is not being abandoned, I think its a really important feature. As far as downloading a zip of your data goes, I think that's fine for people to have a copy of their stuff, but not as a way of transferring data between pods.
Tom Scott Fri 11 Jan 2013 4:42PM
@seantilleycommunitymanager it may be difficult, but i believe this is the first step to providing 3rd-party applications access to DIASPORA as well as providing us with a much-requested feature. we can use the pod-to-pod authentication and transmission knowledge we gain here to build future things that deal with 3rd-party apps.
but that's all out of the scope of this proposal. i'll write up a decision and let's get to work.
Poll Created Fri 11 Jan 2013 4:46PM
Export pod data to an archive Closed Sun 13 Jan 2013 6:53PM
The first step to this whole project is exporting a person's entire persisted history to an archive. Without this key ingredient, there's no point in coding pod-to-pod communications. In order to maintain the philosophy that you should not only be in control of, but own the data you post to DIASPORA, it will be an option to download the archive from your pod. Pods will only retain archives for 4 hours, after which they will be purged.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 40.0% | 2 |
|
| Abstain | 60.0% | 3 |
|
|
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 137 |
|
5 of 142 people have participated (3%)
Tom Scott
Fri 11 Jan 2013 4:47PM
One more thing...is it even possible to write archive files on Heroku? If not, this may need to be an optional feature..
Jonne Haß
Fri 11 Jan 2013 6:20PM
I don't quite see the benefits without upload, with upload this would be too insecure as it's written in this proposal. If we really do this I want a wiki page explaining why there's no upload, that I can direct the shitstorm to.
matl
Sat 12 Jan 2013 3:10PM
Data transfer to another pod is more essential than data export to an archive
Sean Tilley · Thu 10 Jan 2013 10:33PM
@tomscott The issue I have with the quick 'n dirty approach is that it could open up a potential security problem. It's not necessarily a technical problem, so much as that it's a problem of social engineering.
If all the process requires is a download/upload of data, what's stopping someone from finding a way to download someone else's data, upload it to a new pod, and pretend to be that person?