Technology giants, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft have initiated a new data Transfer Project to enable transfer of data from one platform to another.
This provision enables data transfer to related platforms without first downloading and then re-upload as its been of before. Files transfer inform of photos, mails, contacts, calendars and tasks drawing from publicly available application programming interface (API) from Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Remember the Milk and SmugMug.
Tech gurus believe the project will grow into a strong and flexible alternative to conventional APIs.
The current code for the initiative is available on open-source GifHub along with a white paper describing its originality.
The code consists mainly of ‘’adapters’’ that can change into proprietary APIs into an interoperable transfer, making Instagram data workable for Flickr and vice versa. Between those adapters, engineers have also built a system to encrypt the data in transit, issuing forward-secret keys for each transaction. Notably, that system is focused on one-time transfers rather than the continuous interoperability enabled by many APIs.
The bulk of the coding so far has been done by Google and Microsoft engineers who have long been tinkering with the idea of a more robust data transfer system. According to Greg Fair, product manager for Google Takeout, the idea arose from a frustration with the available options for managing data after it’s downloaded. Without a clear way to import that same data to a different service, tools like Takeout were only solving half the problem.
“When people have data, they want to be able to move it from one product to another, and they can’t,” says Fair. “It’s a problem that we can’t really solve alone.”
Most platforms already offer some kind of data-download tool, but those tools rarely connect with other services. Europe’s new GDPR legislation requires tools to provide all available data on a given user, which means it’s far more comprehensive than what you’d get from an API. Along with emails or photos, you’ll find thornier data like location history and facial recognition profiles that many users don’t even realize are being collected. There are a few projects trying to make use of that data most notably Digi.
