14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is making an, albeit small, step towards offering users more control over their data and their ability to extract it from Facebook. The Download Your Information feature now contains more details such as past names, friend requests and even IP addresses you used in the past.
"Starting today, you will be able to download an expanded archive of your Facebook account history," Facebook explained.
"First introduced in 2010, Download Your Information lets you get a copy of what you've shared on Facebook, such as photos, posts, messages, a list of friends and chat conversations," it added.
"Now you can access additional categories of information, including previous names, friend requests you've made and IP addresses you logged in from," it said.
"This feature will be rolling out gradually to all users and more categories of information will be available for download in the future. Download Your Information is available from your Facebook Account Settings," it announced.
The piece of data that would present the most interest to users and especially to competing services, Google in particular, the contact information, is still not available and probably won't be any time soon.
Facebook argues that contact information doesn't belong to the users in the first place, it belongs to their friends, so it can't allow people to just export it.
Of course, the same policy doesn't involve importing that same information from other places or exporting it to companies such as Yahoo or Microsoft. But users themselves and, more importantly Google, can't get it, which is what matters.
Still, the move is in the right direction and Facebook said it plans to include more information in the future. It's got a long way to go before it can come close to Google, though, as it's offering data from several of its products in one place, Google Takeout.