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We can all be thankful Facebook doesn't let you export your friends' e-mail addresses and telephone numbers. The export prohibition doesn't extend to other information about your friends, however. A new free service puts this data in a .csv file you can import to your Outlook and Gmail contacts. Unfortunately, the results leave much to be desired.

Export Friends to .csv wasn't developed by Facebook, but rather by J?rn Arild Anden?s. You can choose to export up to 11 different categories of information about your friends, including Facebook ID, name (full, first, and last), profile … Read more

Everyone is talking security these days. Does this include Facebook?

I ask because a group called "Kill Obama" was on the social-networking site for more than a month before Facebook's attention was drawn to it by CNET late Monday evening.

The group, which appears to have been created in Alberta, Canada, had 122 members and five administrators. Its existence originally caught the eye of Brian Cuban, brother of tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban.

Brian Cuban, who has long criticized Facebook for its attitude toward Holocaust denial groups, used his blog, the Cuban Revolution, to point out the apparent … Read more

If one of your resolutions for this year was to prune your online activity back to a reasonable level, you might have been excited to learn of the new service called the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. The site, which launched in late December, lets you "sign out forever" from the social-networking services Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace.

Until a few days ago, the service also let you kill your Facebook account. However, Facebook got wind of this scheme and shut down access to the site from the Suicide Machine servers, unplugging the unplugger, as it were.

According to … Read more

Some people celebrated the coming of 2010 with crystal glasses of fizzy yellow liquid. Others used the opportunity to stare into their crystal glasses and see what we have and will become.

Perhaps the most pulsating and sad suggestion is that we no longer have any privacy. You burp in Bellingham and someone quickly hears about it in Sydney. You decide you dislike your wife, so you tweet about it, tell your Facebook friends and then get around to telling her. If you can remember to do that.

Even more bilious is the early-in-2009 suggestion of Laurent Haug, CEO of … Read more

Social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can expect more attention from cybercriminals in 2010, according to a new report (PDF) released Tuesday by McAfee Labs. Also at risk are users of Adobe Systems products including Acrobat Reader and Flash. And move over Microsoft; the security firm predicts that Google's Chrome OS will "create another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users."

The company also anticipates smarter and more dangerous Trojans that "follow the money," as well as a "significant trend toward a more distributed and resilient botnet infrastructure that relies much more on … Read more

How did you spend Christmas? Hitwise says it knows: the Internet traffic tracker says you spent at least part of the holiday visiting Facebook, making the social network the most popular U.S. site on the Web.

That's the first time Mark Zuckerberg and company have earned that designation--at the expense of Google--but it is in no way surprising. Facebook saw traffic spike last Christmas, too, and that's when it had a mere 140 million users. The user count is now up to 350 million.

So even if tens of millions of them leave the site in a … Read more

This is definitely a question reeking of our delightful modernity: if you were an escaped convict, would you regularly update your Facebook status?

This question is significant because Craig "Lazie" Lynch has, according to CBSNews.com, been on the run from a British prison since September. However, his Facebook page, updated with a plethora of bons mots Sunday, has stirred so many who admire freedom and, um, crime.

Lynch's musings are enjoying the attention of more than 3,000, um, friends. They have been regaled with Lynch's dilemmas, thoughts and wishes. This, for example, from Sunday: &… Read more

You will, no doubt, be plagued this holiday season by real-time conversations from real-time annoyances who claim to be members of your family. You will, therefore, be tempted to indulge in some excessive real-time drinking that might, just might, affect your sense of, well, the real time, the real place, even the real country you are inhabiting.

However, you will, I hope, be delighted that some very enterprising people have considered your plight and decided to offer you the latest hangover cures in real time. All you need to do is to have your smartest phone about your person at … Read more

Facebook isn't just for kids anymore, but it looks like Disney's still an admirer: The entertainment conglomerate has nominated Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of the massive social network, to its board of directors.

In a release Wednesday, Disney made the announcement and stated that shareholders will vote on Sandberg's nomination (along with the re-election of its 12 current directors) at the company's annual meeting on March 12 in San Antonio, Texas.

"Sheryl has been at the forefront of a technological revolution that's opened up a world of new possibilities for consumers and which … Read more