New Face Opt-In security feature breaks plugin


Facebook have recently announced a new security feature to Facebook to “help you keep your account and information secure.” Unfortunately it can cause the Facebook plugin to stop working. So what’s happening about it?

At the moment, I’m rewriting the plugin to use the new XMPP protocol that Facebook have provided. (You can already start using it yourself if you like but you’ll miss out on features such as larger buddy icons, status messages, notifications, group/friend list management). I’ve been trying to work on it for a while, but due to my fiancée being in hospital for many weeks there’s been a bit of a personal delay 🙂

The other thing you, the user can do, is to tweak the hidden settings of the plugin to work around the new security feature. If you close down Pidgin, edit your .purple/accounts.xml file, find your browser’s user-agent, and paste it into your accounts.xml in the line
<setting name=’user-agent’ type=’string’>YourUserAgentHere</setting>
then Facebook will think that your browser is the one you normally use and should let you pass.
The other alternative of course is to disable (or not opt-in to) this new opt-in feature, but that one’s up to you.

  1. #1 by Matt Hamann on 2010-05-17 - 8:05 am

    I’m super glad to hear this! This plugin has been a life-saver as I hate using the chat window built-in to Facebook itself. We’ve also been having some rather inexplicable issues with one of the Pidgin UI developers in getting him to be more protocol-customization friendly, so your continued efforts with this plugin are most appreciated and will fulfill a great need within the community. Keep up the good work!

  2. #2 by David Munch on 2010-05-17 - 8:56 pm

    I’m glad to hear of your progress! Might one ask how far, approximately, you are in the process?

    • #3 by Eion on 2010-06-01 - 10:57 pm

      There’s a new version 1.67 that handles the new opt-in. It’s not using xmpp yet, but I figured it was worthy of a release

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