Category Archives: Fotobounce

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Data Use Policy Update, Facebook, Fotobounce

Protect Facebook Photos from Bulk Downloaders

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We’ve written about Fotobounce before, here and here . Fotobounce allows you to download full photo albums from  friends or pages that you like on Facebook. Yesterday, we got involved in a discussion about precisely this activity. Some of our artist or photographer friends objected to friends and/or complete strangers downloading their photos and using them on other social media sites. While we agreed that there is a case to be made here, we pointed out that simply putting something on Facebook is telling the world that it’s OK to copy/share/use etc. Anyway, that’s not the point today. In this post, we’ll teach you how to defeat Fotobounce from stealing your photos. (Stealing is a strong word but it kind of fits here.)

Deep inside Facebook’s privacy page, in an area that you probably wouldn’t get to on your own, there is a section that will allow you to prevent Fotobounce from downloading your photo albums. Here’s how to do it:

1. On the top right of any Facebook page, click on the down arrow like this:

Photo of Block Fotobounce 1
Click on Privacy Settings

2. Once you get to the Privacy Settings page, look for the section that says ‘Ads, Apps and Websites’. Click on ‘Edit Settings’.

Photo of Block Fotobounce 2
Click on Edit Settings

 

3. When the next page pops up, look for the section that says ‘How people bring your info to apps they use’.

Photo of Block Fotobounce 3
Click on Edit Settings

 

4. Finally, you’re at the page we want. This is how it probably looks the first time you see it:

Photo of Block Fotobounce 4
Most things are checked on this page. This isn’t good.

What you see here are the controls for what parts of your information Facebook apps can use. This is completely separate from what your friends can see or what strangers can see. We’ve already covered hiding things from your friends in many previous posts. Right now, we want to stop any Facebook apps from using your personal information including your photo albums. 

5. You’ll have to take our word for it but ignore the last line: “But, remember, you will not be able to use any games or apps yourself.” That line is total baloney. 

TIP: Despite what Facebook and games such as Farmville tell you, games and apps do not need access to anything other than your Basic Information. Check the photo below. Basic Information is not something that can be hidden anyway.  If you uncheck everything on that page, you will still be able to play games as usual. Please note that you can also limit what parts of your Basic Information that anyone can see. More on that in a future post. 

6. Here is how one of our accounts looks after we fixed our app settings:

Photo of Block Fotobounce 5
Nothing is checked and we can still play games. Looks like Facebook lied.

 

7. You see above that nothing is checked. Apps cannot see anything about this profile. Neither can websites or, supposedly, games. At least that’s what Facebook tells you. More on that in a future post. The good news is that Fotobounce will not be able to access your photos at all. Not only will they not be able to download them, your photos are not even visible in Fotobounce.

We advise you to take these steps immediately to protect your personal data from being spread across websites and Facebook apps and games. Once everything is unchecked, your own Facebook experience won’t change. You won’t notice any difference. Then again, you won’t be shocked when your face shows up on a website or game somewhere, either. That, we think, is worth the few minutes that this process takes.

Thanks for reading! Stay in touch on Facebook, too. Here’s the Computers Made Simple Facebook page link: https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple?ref=hl

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Facebook, Fotobounce, PhotoLive

Save Facebook Albums – a new way to do it

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PhotoLive is a new way to download photo albums from Facebook. We’ve used it a few times and it still has some bugs but we thought we’d share our experiences so far. We’ve written about FotoBounce before and it works quite well. PhotoLive, however, was able to retrieve some albums that FotoBounce could not. Here’s how you can use PhotoLive.

TIP: PhotoLive did not work for us when we tried it in Internet Explorer. It worked quite well in Google Chrome but not IE. Again, your mileage may vary.

First, make sure that your bookmarks bar is showing at the top of your browser window. Each browser is different so your settings may vary. We use Chrome and this is how it’s done with it:

Photo of Chrome menu
Top right, Bookmarks then ‘Show bookmark bar’.

 

Head to the PhotoLive Site, then drag the blue bar up to your bookmarks bar. (Click once on it and hold the mouse button down, then drag it up to the bar and release the button.) PhotoLive  doesn’t ask for permissions, unlike Fotobounce. It’s a browser add-on more than a Facebook app.

Photo of PhotoLive home page
Drag the blue box up to your bookmarks bar.

 

Now  your bar should have these words on it:

Photo of Chrome Bookmarks Bar
Look for the words ‘Download Photos’.

Just remember that none of this is going to work unless you are inside your Facebook account. Head over now and log in, if you aren’t already, then go to a photo album that you want to save to your computer. When you get there, click on the Download Photos button that we just put on your booksmarks bar. This is what you’ll see next:

Photo of PhotoLive menu
Click the green button to start the download.

 

Here is where you might run into a problem. PhotoLive can’t function inside of a secure browsing environment. What does that mean? It means that if you have turned on Secure Browsing in your Facebook Privacy settings, PhotoLive won’t work.

You should always have Secure Browsing turned on, however. In this one case, you can turn it off, download the album, then turn it back on again. The error page that comes up when you click Download Photos describes how to turn Secure Browsing off. (Head to your Account Settings, click on the Security badge on the top left side then uncheck the box to the left of ‘Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) when possible’. Then click on ‘Save Changes’ and you’re done.)

Head back to the album you want, do the same steps as before to save the album and PhotoLive will show you this screen next:

Photo of PhotoLive download screen.
PhotoLive saves the albums in zip files.

 

The zip files will be saved to your normal download folder, usually Downloads. A zip file is a compressed folder. You can read how to unzip them here: How to Zip and Unzip Folders. Once you unzip the file, you can browse the images.

TIP: For some reason, PhotoLive does not download every photo in an album. We’re not sure why that is but you won’t get them all. An alternative to PhotoLive is Fotobounce, mentioned before, which will get every photo if it can get any at all. If you use a combination of both programs, you’ll probably be able to save almost any album that you come across on Facebook.

Now that you’re finished downloading the album, head back to your Facebook Security settings and turn Secure Browsing back on again.

Hopefully, this how-to is crystal clear but if it’s not, let us know. Questions, comments are always welcome.

Thanks for reading! While you’re on Facebook, why not like our page:  https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple?ref=hl

 

 

Facebook, Fotobounce, Free Software

A Problem with Fotobounce?

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I’ve written about Fotobounce before, here are a couple of links to my older posts: here (Fotobounce explained) and here  (Download a whole Facebook album)

Fotobounce is fairly simple to use and does the job quite well. If you’re into downloading photo albums on Facebook, Fotobounce is pretty much the only way to do it but it does have one limitation that I’ve just discovered. Here’s the problem. When, and if, I get things sorted out, I’ll post an update on this.

The Goal: One of my friends has one album, Wall Photos, that has thousands of images in it. Many of these images are spectacular and I would like to archive them for my own inspiration and enjoyment.

The Problem: Fotobounce cannot download this album. It tries, sometimes for hours, but it can’t seem to get past the spinning wheel that indicates Fotobounce is working on something. Once, just once, Fotobounce got halfway through downloading the album, then got hung up before the job was done. I tried as recently as this morning for one full hour with nothing else running on the computer and Fotobounce failed again.

My Solution: Although I am not a programmer, I have noticed that Fotobounce does not work like other downloaders. I’m not sure why but Fotobounce seems to cache the photos it is downloading in a temp folder somewhere. Yesterday, I deleted my old Fotobounce installation and installed a fresh version. During the installation process, I changed the ‘save to’ directory to one that I made on my desktop. I wanted to keep track of what Fotobounce was doing and this desktop folder is a lot easier to find than the default directory in My Documents.

After Fotobounce was installed, I tried to download the problem album yet again. To test my theory, I also downloaded a smaller, but still sizeable, album at the same time. As Fotobounce was working, nothing was showing in the desktop folder. As soon as Fotobounce declared that one of the jobs was finished, that album popped up in the desktop folder. Even though Fotobounce worked for hours on the massively larger album, nothing ever showed up in the folder. Where are the images that we partially downloaded? I can only assume that they are in a temp folder somewhere.

The computer that I use Fotobounce on is pretty much the latest and greatest you can get. I built it myself and it’s not a slug, believe me. Lots of storage, 3 terabytes, lots of RAM, 8 gigabytes, and a pretty fast quad processor (i5-2500K @3.3 Ghz) plus Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS. I doubt that my rig is the problem here. Even if Fotobounce caches the images in RAM, there should be enough room. I am pretty sure the album, although it’s large, isn’t 4 or 5 gigabytes in size.

If you are downloading a torrent, your torrent client writes directly to your hard drive, it doesn’t cache your download. It may use a temp folder but the folder is right there in the directory where you have chosen to put the torrents. Sometimes, if you are downloading photos, you can actually look at some of the photos or play the avi file long before the download has completed. No such luck with Fotobounce. Nothing shows until it’s finished the job and, when the album is too large, it seems that nothing is written at all!

As a writer/experimenter/tech guy, I look at problems such as this from a different point of view than most users, I think. It’s a challenge. Once I find the solution, I write about it. If I don’t find a solution, I write about that, too. This particular setback may not have a solution. It’s frustrating but sometimes these things can be that way. We’ll see what happens. If I discover an answer, you’ll be the first to hear.

Thanks for reading!

Facebook, Facebook Tricks, Fotobounce, Photography, Social Networking

Fotobounce – downloading a Facebook photo album

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I’ve written about Fotobounce before. If you share photos from one social media site to another, Fotobounce is a great tool. It allows you to download complete Facebook photo albums to your computer. What you do with them after that is your business, I guess, but you really should ask for permission if you are going to share anything that isn’t your own. Here is an explanation about what Fotobounce is: Fotobounce Made Simple   (The original post wasn’t named that but it sounds good, right?)

While Fotobounce is a cool app, the actual downloading of albums can get tricky because of the way the instructions are worded. In this post I’ll try to help you figure out the odd English that they use in the selection process. Before I forget, Fotobounce is available here: http://fotobounce.com/

1. Download and install Fotobounce…duh!

2. Open the program and head over to Facebook. Sign in to Facebook with Fotobounce. You’ll have to allow it access but, according to the makers, they don’t save your password. You can always remove the access after you’ve downloaded the albums that are of interest.

3. Find the album you want to download. You have to sort through your friends, your likes and your acquaintances to find the right album(s) but that’s pretty basic.

4. Once you find the album, right click it. You’ll see the ‘Download’ button. Click it and the following menu pops up:

Choose where you want the album to be downloaded.
I've selected Events by clicking on it but I haven't started the download.

5. In this menu, you are choosing the main folder for the download. If you click ‘Select album’, Fotobounce will start the download to, in this case, Events. That’s not what I want. I want to create a sub-folder and then maybe a sub-sub-folder. Let’s do that. We’ll make a sub-folder inside of Events.

6. Click New Album. Fotobounce will show you a new album dialogue, as pictured below, and it will have the same name as the album has on Facebook. We don’t want that. We need to sort out the downloaded albums according to whose they were on Facebook, right?

Make a new album in Fotobounce
Type the new name of the album in the box and hit Enter.

 

7. Instead of Profile Pictures, I want to name my new album ‘Joe Nemechek’. (Joe and I are lookalikes to the point that I get stopped in stores. If I ever headed South and wore a NASCAR jacket then I’m sure I’d eat free wherever I went.) Type in whatever name you want and hit the Enter key. A new album will be created and Fotobounce will give you a notice at the top of the page.

8. Once you’ve found your new folder, click on it and you’ll see the same menu window come up same as before, giving you the option to Select that album or make a New album inside of it. This time you can leave the name the same, if you want. The default name is the same name as it was on Facebook.

9. If that name is fine, click on the Select Album button and Fotobounce will download the album inside of the album that you just created.

This sounds pretty simple, right? It’s not. Here’s the problem, as I see it. When I see the words ‘Select album’, I expect to get a choice. Instead of the normal ‘OK” that everyone else uses, Fotobounce uses ‘Select album’ as the button that starts the download. Unless you make a folder or a folder within a folder, Fotobounce will happily download your albums into the same directory. Good luck trying to figure that out when you’ve got more than a few albums in your collection. You have to create new albums if you are ever going to figure out which album is which. Sure, you could to all of this within Windows Explorer but it should be a one-step process or the wording should be a bit clearer. That’s what I think, anyway.

Fotobounce does a lot more than simply saving albums in Facebook. Check it out. I’ve just scratched the surface here.

Thanks for reading!