Posts about facebook

Splitting a Facebook event calendar

Node-RED is a flow-based programming tool, originally developed by IBM’s Emerging Technology Services team and now a part of the JS Foundation.

My friends make liberal use of Facebook events, unfortunately I find the events interface impossible to navigate. Luckily they do have a .ics available, unluckily events you haven't accepted are mixed with events you have.

So I made a simple flow that splits accepted events from tentative events. This way I can subscribe to this .ics in my Nextcloud instance and give tentative events a different color. I find a calendar is much more usable.

I used the node-red-contrib-httpauth node. The main bit is contained in a function node, mainly because I couldn't figure out how to sanely do this with the split node.

Use is simple:

  1. Update the http auth node with your preferred user:pasword
  2. Add your facebook event calendar url to the http request node
  3. subscribe to user:[email protected]/nod-red/facebook/accepted or user:[email protected]/nod-red/facebook/tentative

[{"id":"30abd373.bd5524","type":"http in","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"","url":"/facebook/:request","method":"get","upload":false,"swaggerDoc":"","x":160,"y":300,"wires":[["77e1feab.382658"]]},{"id":"705a7847.bc5d","type":"debug","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"","active":false,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":false,"complete":"true","targetType":"full","x":430,"y":400,"wires":[]},{"id":"77e1feab.382658","type":"node-red-contrib-httpauth","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"","file":"","cred":"","authType":"Basic","realm":"","username":"","password":"","hashed":false,"x":240,"y":340,"wires":[["116bd38e.4b7dcc","705a7847.bc5d"]]},{"id":"e1172439.6bf4b8","type":"comment","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"Secure with Basic Auth","info":"","x":200,"y":380,"wires":[]},{"id":"116bd38e.4b7dcc","type":"switch","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"","property":"req.params.request","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"eq","v":"accepted","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"tentative","vt":"str"},{"t":"else"}],"checkall":"true","repair":false,"outputs":3,"x":430,"y":300,"wires":[["eaff2195.a68b38"],["eaff2195.a68b38"],["83c3be58.0fc9a8"]]},{"id":"4d794bb0.d8ef74","type":"function","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"Split Calendar","func":"msg.payload = msg.payload.toString('utf8');\nmsg.payload = msg.payload.replace(\"END:VCALENDAR\", \"\");\nmsg.payload = msg.payload.split(/(?=BEGIN:VEVENT)/g);\nmsg.calendar = msg.payload[0];\n\nmsg.payload.forEach(function(part, index){\n   if (part.includes(\"PARTSTAT:ACCEPTED\") && (msg.req.params.request == \"accepted\")){\n       msg.calendar += part;\n   } else if (part.includes(\"PARTSTAT:TENTATIVE\") && (msg.req.params.request == \"tentative\") ){\n       msg.calendar += part;\n   }\n});\n\nmsg.calendar += \"END:VCALENDAR\";\nreturn msg;","outputs":2,"noerr":0,"x":1000,"y":300,"wires":[["6b67410a.701ab"],[]]},{"id":"13bdf419.e491ec","type":"http request","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"","method":"GET","ret":"bin","paytoqs":false,"url":"","tls":"","proxy":"","authType":"","x":830,"y":300,"wires":[["4d794bb0.d8ef74"]]},{"id":"ab19b6e9.4b1ed8","type":"comment","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"Facebook event calendar URL","info":"","x":890,"y":340,"wires":[]},{"id":"83c3be58.0fc9a8","type":"http response","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"404","statusCode":"404","headers":{},"x":430,"y":360,"wires":[]},{"id":"6b67410a.701ab","type":"change","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"","rules":[{"t":"move","p":"calendar","pt":"msg","to":"payload","tot":"msg"},{"t":"set","p":"headers['content-type']","pt":"msg","to":"text/calendar","tot":"str"}],"action":"","property":"","from":"","to":"","reg":false,"x":1180,"y":300,"wires":[["d1e9086f.645b78"]]},{"id":"d1e9086f.645b78","type":"http response","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"Return","statusCode":"200","headers":{},"x":1330,"y":300,"wires":[]},{"id":"eaff2195.a68b38","type":"change","z":"ce798f74.64a9d8","name":"Set Browser User Agent","rules":[{"t":"set","p":"headers.User-Agent","pt":"msg","to":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:73.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/73.0","tot":"str"}],"action":"","property":"","from":"","to":"","reg":false,"x":630,"y":300,"wires":[["13bdf419.e491ec"]]}]

Dugite is this video of you?

Ohhh a virus!

This morning I received a link in Facebook messenger from an old friend, someone I haven't spoken to in years. It was obviously a phishing link, the title was wrong "Dugite is this a video of you?" and the preview image was blurry, like it was stuck not loading.

Needless to say I didn't click and messaged them back saying "Probably should change your password?"

What Interests me is the reaction when this friend posted on their wall, within minuets, not to open any messages from them and they "HAVE A VIRUS ON MY PHONE". Out of 7 people 3 opened the obviously shady link.

Not one of these people who opened this link mentioned they will now need to change their password, in fact one person even said it all should be ok once it's gone through their entire address book. The non-technical people, to me at least, seem to be treating phishing and malware like you would the common cold. It'll pass, fact of life and not a real concern.

They of course should be very concerned with the majority of web browsing occurring on the mobile the amount of data that is potentially stored on a phone is astronomically large. From your banking app to your photos and everything you can gain access through your email accounts is at risk. Mobile operating systems are, thankfully, very locked down with each app operating somewhat isolated from the others, but that's not a guarantee.

I fear the next decade of tech breaches are going to get ugly and there just isn't a technical solution to user apathy.