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Providing People Greater Clarity and Control

December 12, 2012ByAlex Wyler

We are introducing a series of updates to the Login dialog to improve the clarity and control of the app permissions process. We have already launched many of these improvements as part of our iOS6 integration and are now rolling them out more broadly.

Clearer presentation and language

Our Login dialogs have undergone a redesign to make it easier to understand permissions that apps request. We've simplified presentation and have also updated our language for greater clarity.

“Basic info” has been renamed to “public profile and friend list,” to reflect what is being shared. Apps accessing your public profile get your name, profile picture, age range, gender, language, country and other public information.

Additionally, we streamlined the way we present publishing permissions to people to a single request - “MyApp would like to post to your friends on your behalf.” Previously, apps had to request separate permissions for publish_stream, publish_actions and publish_checkins. However, these permissions do similar things so we simplified it. A person can decide if an app can publish to Facebook or not.

[Updated] We currently support three publishing permissions: publish_actions, publish_stream, and publish_checkins. Moving forward, we recommend that apps only ask for publish_actions, as this permission encompasses the other two and we want to simplify the model. To ease the transition to this single permission, when asking for any one of these, the language presented to the person using the app is identical: "Example App would like to post to your friends on your behalf."

Separating read and write requests

Sharing information with an app to personalize your experience is very different than giving an app permission to post updates to your friends. These are now separated into a two-screen permission process.

Decoupling these requests gives people greater control when deciding what personal information they want to share with the app. For example, a person can grant an app the ability to read their public profile and friends list in order to sign up for the app, but decline to allow it to post to Facebook on their behalf.

Next Steps

We will begin rolling out these changes today to mobile and non-game web apps. No change is required to your code. All apps will automatically be migrated into the new dialog.

To learn more about working with the Login dialog, please see our documentation.