I installed a WordPress plugin to post on my FB wall on my behalf. Now, to be able to do this I needed an app that the WordPress plugin can trigger to post on the wall. I created a basic app and while configuring the same on WordPress it asked me for my FB id. I know Facebook has replaced numeric ids with customized FB profile URLs. However some of the links on the profile page still points to the numeric ids. So, I tried using that one from my profile page. Oops! It didn’t work. The link to my profile pic contained something like “?fbid=107874515918311&”. I guessed the numeric part was the id since it’s referred to “fbid” but still my WordPress plugin would fail. I then googled a bit to get what I needed.

What I found was funny. A comment on an article suggested I try the following link:

https://graph.facebook.com/fbusername

I did so and yes I got my numeric FB id and some other details too. Here I thought I got the details because I was already logged on Facebook. Being curious I opened the URL in another browser where I wasn’t logged and again I got the same profile information.

That being said even if you have no Facebook account you can mine some data from the website. To what extent data can be mined I can’t say though.