Developing for the Facebook API without getting a Facebook account

Question

I do not want to open a Facebook account, but I've been asked to develop features for an app that requires using the Facebook API. Is there a way to develop these features and use the Facebook API without opening a personal Facebook account and letting Facebook start mining information about me?

Answer 1

No - you can not do this.
Facebook requires a user to be verified before they can create and develop apps with the Graph API.

I'd think it is so that they can track "bad" applications back to real people in the event that the application has violated their TOS.
Or in the event of major success :P (to look on the bright side ;)

You could open a false account but that too is frowned apon by Facebook. I was once asked (politely), by Facebook, to send "an official government document" complete with a picture in order to verify that a user was indeed representing a real "John Smith" (Yes... wrong name choice I guess ;) In any case - obviously I couldn't provide such documents and the account was closed - so I'd recommend against it.

You might be able to ask your client to provide a Facebook account. In any case one should always have more than one administrator for an application (usually your's and your client's accounts). This is to ensure that one of you will always have control over the application. If one of your accounts gets suspended/closed then you'll still be able to access the settings through the other.

In my story of John Smith - I had left some applications under sole administration of Mr. Smith and when his account got closed I lost all control over those applications and had to contact Facebook to deal with the issue; I managed to resolve this and transfer ownership of the application in the end.

I hope my little rant shed some light on the issue :)

Answer 2

No, but you don't have to give Facebook ALL of your information; just enough to create an account and start developing.