Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter launch Data Transfer Project

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About us

The Data Transfer Project was formed in 2017 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.

The contributors to the Data Transfer Project believe portability and interoperability are central to innovation. Making it easier for individuals to choose among services facilitates competition, empowers individuals to try new services and enables them to choose the offering that best suits their needs.

Current contributors include:

What is the Data Transfer Project

Data Transfer Project (DTP) is a collaboration of organizations committed to building a common framework with open-source code that can connect any two online service providers, enabling a seamless, direct, user initiated portability of data between the two platforms.

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How does it work

The Data Transfer Project uses services’ existing APIs and authorization mechanisms to access data. It then uses service specific adapters to transfer that data into a common format, and then back into the new service’s API.

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What are some use cases

There are many use cases for users porting data directly between services, some we know about today, and some we have yet to discover. A couple of examples of ones we know users want today are:

• Trying out a new service
• Leaving a service
• Backing up your data

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Why do we need DTP

Users should be in control of their data on the web, part of this is the ability to move their data. Currently users can download a copy of their data from most services, but that is only half the battle in terms of moving their data. DTP aims make move data between providers significantly easier for users.

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Technical Overview

To get a more in-depth understanding of the project, its fundamentals and the details involved, please download “Data Transfer Project Overview and Fundamentals”. You can also use the button at the top of the page.



How to try it out

DTP is still in development and is not quite ready for everyone to use yet. However if you want to give it a shot we have a couple methods you can try out:

Note: For both of these you need to get your own API keys from the services you want to port data between; please see instructions for getting keys.

• Via Docker
• Via Code
• Sites powered by DTP (coming soon)

How to participate

We welcome everyone to participate, the more expertise and viewpoints we have contributing to the project the more successful it will be.

• If you are a company that wants to add an integration to allow your users to easy import and export data: Learn More
• If you are an individual that wants to contribute technically please see our contributions guide: Learn More
• If you want to be involved in non-technical aspects of the project you can join the discussion at dtp-discuss or email the maintainers at [email protected]

Current State

DTP is still in very active development. While we have code that works for a variety of use cases we are continually making improvements that might cause things to break occasionally. So as you are trying things please use it with caution and expect some hiccups. Both our bug list, as well as documentation in each provider’s directory are good places to look for known issues, or report problems you encounter.

Source: https://datatransferproject.dev/

White paper (pdf): https://datatransferproject.dev/dtp-overview.pdf