Docs.com makes it easy for you to discover, create and share documents on Facebook. To achieve these goals, we’ve integrated with the Facebook platform and website. The following lays out specifics of how and for what purposes docs.com makes use of Facebook user data.
At a high level, why does docs.com need to access my Facebook content?
Docs.com uses Facebook content for two reasons: to verify your access to shared documents, and to personalize your docs.com experience.
How and why does docs.com use Facebook content to verify access to documents?
As a web service centered on the sharing of documents, docs.com assigns user permissions to each document on the site. You, the document owner, may grant the ability to read and edit your documents to whomever you’d like. When you grant others access to your documents, you may choose to have the docs.com service publish Facebook notifications one of two ways – by direct message to that user’s Facebook inbox, or by a post to your own News Feed. When your friends click these posted links, docs.com uses Facebook user data to ensure that you’ve granted them access to your document.
How and why does docs.com instantly personalize my experience?
Docs.com uses Facebook’s new instant personalization to enable smooth transitions when a user navigates from Facebook’s website to the docs.com website. Docs.com is then able to seamlessly verify access permissions, and to list other documents the user has access to. This increases the likelihood that the friends you’ve invited to edit your document will in fact do so.
What Facebook content does docs.com access?
Docs.com accesses your Facebook username, list of friends and profile pictures.
What Facebook content does docs.com store and why?
Docs.com stores the unique user number (ID) that identifies a given user on Facebook. This helps docs.com identify that user when they visit the site and enables docs.com to confirm a user’s ability to view, edit and create documents.
What content does docs.com cache (temporarily store) and why?
Docs.com temporarily stores a given user’s list of Facebook friends, including their names and profile pictures, for two reasons: to provide you a list of friends to invite to your documents, and to show you documents that your friends have shared with you.
How does docs.com gain access to this user data?
Docs.com only accesses this information if you or one of your friends visits the site.
What if I don’t want to participate?
You can click the “no thanks” button in the blue bar to opt-out of the instant personalization experience, after which docs.com will no longer be able to access your Facebook content without you explicitly signing into docs.com via Facebook Connect and granting the service permission. You can also block the application and the instant personalization experience within your Facebook privacy settings by going here.
How does docs.com gain the ability to perform actions on my behalf?
Once you’ve attempted to use some of the more advanced features of the website, docs.com will prompt you for extended permissions. For example, in order to comment on a document, docs.com must have been explicitly granted the ability to post comments on your behalf.
Docs.com has been designed to provide a seamless and secure document sharing experience while also enabling the user to remain in control of what information they disclose to others, including us.
As docs.com continues to evolve, we will notify you on this blog of any changes that might impact such key issues as information confidentiality, disclosure and privacy.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at docspriv@microsoft.com.
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