Jun 29 2009
Creepy Goings On At Facebook
I was friended today by an internet pal I’ve known since the dawn of my first website back in 2001. He sent the friend request and in it was a little message saying he just joined Facebook and that I popped up in his sidebar and he didn’t know why.
Having been a member of Facebook for longer than five minutes, one thing I could explain was that the ‘People You Might Know’ thing displays people based on who you have as mutual friends. Right?
Well I checked my friend’s seven-person (and growing) friends list to find that there was nobody on there that I had ever been Facebook friends with. Odd, but no biggie and off I surfed.
Well just now I was in Facebook and a familiar face appeared in my sidebar. I was positive I had seen the face before but wasn’t sure where and opened up her friends list to see who we both know. The answer? Nobody! Then I remembered where I’d seen her face it was in a funny video about eating some crazy ice cream desert with corn in it in Asia, I think. Her face must have stuck in my mind because of her reaction to the bite she took… it was pretty funny. She was not impressed.
But this raises some questions… why did this person appear in the ‘People You Might Know’ sidebar? Why did I appear in my old friend’s friend suggester thing? I don’t have any mutual friends with either of these people. What does Facebook know and how the hell do they know it??
There’s just something creepy about this whole thing. Anyone know how ‘The FB Machine’ works on this matter?
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I've been travelling since January 2008 living off earnings from the web. Follow me as I bum around Asia and beyond, getting up to mischief and working online as I go. 
This post on Consumerist explains it
http://consumerist.com/5301425/facebook-where-are-you-getting-these-crazy-friend-suggestions-from
I’ve noticed weird things like that happening, too. People who I know show up on my ‘Friend Suggestions,’ but there’s no Facebook link between me and that person. (i.e. no common friends) How does Facebook know that I know that person? Kinda creepy if you ask me.
You have the option of letting Facebook go through your email addressbook. Perhaps someone you’ve friended on Facebook or exchanged emails with has exchanged email with your mystery person. Ah, that’s pretty much what the link to the Consumerist above says.
My best WTF! friend suggestion was my cheater ex-wife who I’ve not spoken to in 5 years. Ha ha! “That’s a big ‘X’ on that one, thanks!”
this actually just happened to me a couple days ago - someone who I have only talked to on AIM and met on another website (don’t have their email, don’t know any mutual people as far as I know) popped up. It freaked me out, and I actually thought I was reading it wrong at first. Creepy…
I noticed yesterday, a suggestion of person I spoke to on a different website about 6 years ago as “a friend you may know” and was wondering how on earth they managed to link us. The consumerist post is very informative but it makes me wonder just how much more aggregate information they gather and store other than the basics we provide. Very clever of them to keep this data all that time if they are only just started to use it now for the site now.
Heres to creep you out some more, Facebook is Big Brother (CIA) in disguise:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534
What gives me the creeps is that facebook asks for your email password to create the initial contact list, and people are are actually using that function. You want my guess how many will not change the pwd afterwards?
There’s a word for that: PISHING.
Not solely contact related, but somewhat similar.
I created a facebook event and threw a shin-dig about a week ago. Approx. 15 people from facebook RSVP’d that they were attending. Only 4 of those 15 showed up (don’t worry, I had plenty of non-facers present - not a total failure) but the day after my little get together… in the section below where facebook now shares “popular” content, I had a message that listed my event and said “4 of your friends attended.”
When I first saw it, I thought, oh, I guess only 4 people RSVP’d attending, so I checked the event page and sure enough, there were about 15 people signed up. However, facebook somehow knew exactly who actually showed up. It even listed the four people who came and got it correct. Now this has to be a coincidence, I refuse to believe that this is somehow actually possible. Maybe a post-event survey (even though I’ve certainly never seen one before).
Very strange.
Well, there are several factors in here I guess…
You have the network you’re in, city, your religion, political view, music, movies, books etc..
If you combine any of these into a key, you are probably very likely to end up getting people you actually know.
I have had this experience lately too. My landlord, our building tenant and co-workers. Co-workers was strange because I have never invited anyone from work to my facebook profile. The link I found was in my digital address book. Facebook was going through my email to find connections. And of course, in my email I have all that information, even though they are not friends. Creepy is the perfect word. I keep thinking about all the information I store digitally and how risky that is. But, what other options do we have. We now need passwords for everything, and we can’t keep them all in our head.
I’ve never trusted facebook. I remember back when they announced that they would display ads based on what websites we visit. That was a big red flag that they were keeping too much tabs on what we do. They have far too much information and what reason do we really have to trust them?
The CIA conspiracy link is interesting. It would all make sense. To get a network like facebook so huge you would need a large amount of funding. It is unlikely that a college kid could raise that kind of money on his own. Obviously the CIA would love to have access to something like this too.
Facebook is super creepy. Have you read the terms of service? Nothing that happens there is much of a surprise.
It’s me — the girl who ate the dessert garnished with cream corn. Facebook is very strange and kind of irritating. It suggests friends to me based on people I’ve emailed *after* doing the “Friend Finder” step. Can it still have its spidery hands in my email account?
Kristy, I’m still not sure whether or not we’ve ever emailed and I’m still not sure if we have a mutual friend. I guess it will continue to plague us both.