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kuckie
October 30th, 2010, 09:45 AM
Hi everyone,

that oneī s giving me a brain-twister: Recently received an invitation to facebook on my private email adress from a relative. Kinda scary thing however was that there were already suggestions of people I could also know on facebook and itīs been a 100% hit-list, meaning those 10 people proposed I all knew. But some of them I met long ago and were in contact with only via skype or even only IRL for not longer than 2 weeks.

I checked if this is real and registered with a fake name, but the same email adress, and voila, the "people you could know list" was even bigger and still accurate. So itīs got to be related to my email, not my name.

Iīve never been on facebook, my email adress canīt be found googling. And some of the people proposed definitely dont know it. And there are people wereīs no connection to other people I know (like this is a friend of your friends friend...).

I dont see the connection.

Anyone help me out?

:)

t.rei
October 30th, 2010, 10:09 AM
If you know 10 people who all know 3 people who all know someone, chances are that someone else most of those 10 people know also knows the three people.

Don't think too directly. Facebook (and google and all those others for that matter) are professionals at drawing conclusions as to who might know whom and might communicate or has communicated with someone. It is THEIR field of expertise, research and main source of income.

kuckie
October 30th, 2010, 11:36 AM
So you think itīs just excellent data mining stuff? Pretty anoying (what facebook does). :D

Barrucadu
October 30th, 2010, 01:46 PM
On the other hand, the vast majority of my friend suggestions I don't know. It's a bit hit and miss.

Earl_Maroon
October 30th, 2010, 01:56 PM
I don't know about this, but once Youtube suggested friends for me to add, all of whom were existing Facebook friends. These accounts are separate. I am not happy with this crap.

Troublegum
October 30th, 2010, 02:01 PM
The answer is simple: if one person uses facebook via iphone, its syncs the phone's adressbook with facebook.

So if theres one person who has your email stored in his iphone, then facebook probably knows. As soon as you login, fb will suggest this contact.

Bölvaður
October 30th, 2010, 02:07 PM
What they have:

All contacts on msn.
See who sends email to who from and to hotmail accounts.
Friends trying to find you before.
All contacts that has had contact with you and the structure of the "friend tree/web"


Many people on my suggested as friends I have no idea who are,, and I also had friend requests from random people from people I dont remember any more when I signed up for facebook.

What you most also remember that what look like unlikely events happen very often, so even if this wasnt a common thing to get 10 suggested friends that you know, you still might be the lucky one, the one that has something happening to that looks as impossible because it's too unlikely... well unlikely things happen all the time and this is not one of them.

JustinR
October 30th, 2010, 11:08 PM
So you think itīs just excellent data mining stuff? Pretty anoying (what facebook does). :D

Facebook wasn't meant to connect you to new people - just people you already knew.

lisati
October 30th, 2010, 11:15 PM
Another source of info for websites is guessing based on doing a geolocation lookup of your IP address. It's not a reliable way of doing things: the static IP address I use shows up as being in Auckland, something like 600km away. I was mildly amused to have a popup the other day similar to this: "Hello, I'm in Auckland too."

sydbat
October 30th, 2010, 11:32 PM
They use the MLB satellite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother%27s_Little_Helper) to read your mind...

Decatf
October 31st, 2010, 02:43 AM
1984 is here. Most people just don't realize it.

CraigPaleo
October 31st, 2010, 05:38 AM
Additionally, If you are in someone's address book and they use Facebook's "invite friends" feature, they can import their entire address book and it'll send invites to all of them.

It's actually an invitation to join FB but if you're already a member it'll send a friend request instead.

witeshark17
October 31st, 2010, 05:43 AM
Automated internet research is in a new era... :popcorn:

Khakilang
October 31st, 2010, 05:47 AM
I think they have some mutant that when he put his helmet on in some lab. He can read your mind and extract any information from you.

NightwishFan
October 31st, 2010, 05:58 AM
Is there a way I can subscribe to your posts. :lolflag: