11 ms·
> Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it). This is the part of Facebook that's really creepy. As
by Swizec 11y ago
> Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it).
This is the part of Facebook that's really creepy. As a guy who used to date around a lot, I was surprised by how well the "find user" function works.
You connect with someone on Tinder, and meet up in real life. You have no friends in common, no digital connection other than a week-old Tinder conversation consisting of 5 messages. Neither of you checks-in to the restaurant you met up at.
But when you type the woman's first name into Facebook (you don't know her last name), she will be the first suggested result.
I don't know how they do it. But they do it. I'm assuming geo-tracking of phones and noticing that you spent X hours together the previous night.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> I don't know how they do it. But they do it. I'm assuming geo-tracking of phones and noticing that you spent X hours together the previous night. My boss and I were wondering the same thing after spending few days at client's site in another country, after which Facebook suggested the client as a friend to my boss, even though they never interacted electronically by means other than company e-mail. We thought about geo-tracking, but then concluded that it's more likely Facebook must have identified both of them were connecting to the same Wi-Fi network at the same time.
- kuschku 11y agoThis is insanely creepy...
- Swizec 11y agoSomehow the Wi-Fi network theory sounds even creepier than geo-tracking. Also in my example, I didn't usually connect to any Wi-Fi because I have LTE. But of course I don't turn off wi-fi when I leave the house so my phone still does network discovery.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoDoes it now? By Wi-Fi tracking I'm thinking of SSID matching (which are public information), not pinging devices inside a single network. Your data point about on-but-not-connected Wi-Fi supports both geotracking and SSID tracking. We need more data!
- techdragon 11y agoFacebook harvests a mountain of data about you when you use the new Messenger app. I swear the only purpose it has as a separate app is to be far worse than they think they can get away with the main Facebook app being. It's probably from the messenger data that they correlated your proximity.
- lukeschlather 11y agoWell, when you think about it they probably associate users who use the same IP address. From that perspective it's difficult to see how they could avoid using this data. It's like not noticing that two different people called you from the same number.
- Natsu 11y agoAnother possibility is that your social graph might have more overlap than you realize, even if it's not very much, it could be enough to make them the 'nearest' to you in some way. At least some of the graph data can come from sources invisible to you (i.e. people looking at other people's Facebook connections).
- TeMPOraL 11y agoYes, that could be an option too, though in this case it would be surprising given that this was a new subcontractor of our actual client, in a place neither of us have ever been before. But I recognize the phenomena you mention; I sometimes see random people on Facebook with surprising amount of overlap with my social graph, even crossing the groups I consider mostly unrelated (say, a person is a friend with few of my buddies from university AND some other unrelated group of locals AND also knows that random person I met somewhere that lives on the other side of the country).
- Natsu 11y agoThat does seem hard to explain. It's creepy sometimes to wonder just how much they can figure out from how little and where all the information siphons are actually located.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoHonestly, I find it both empowering (oh the data I can find if I know where to look) and reassuring. Why reassuring? Because it reminds us that lies can and will be discovered. Some people like to think they'll get away with one but it's only a function of how much someone else cares. But reality is self-consistent and in the Great Web of Causality falsehood is just damage that needs to be routed over. Conversely, lying is a malicious act. It'sdirectly sabotaging the model of the world and reasoning capabilities of other human beings, with recursive damage being dealt as that person propagates or reasons from false information. Unless placed in life or death situation (std::jews_hiding_in_your_basement), you really shouldn't do it. It boggles my mind how lightly people treat spreading falsehoods.
- LoSboccacc 11y agoYou know when websites ask for consent to share data with third parties? This is mostly how they do it. What you view on linkedin goes to fb and vice versa. I had used a chat service only once to call some guys and the day after all participants were suggestions on linkedin. To most of those free service a product is you and they monetize your graph in this way. Then you have subsidiaries. You may gave not given facebook or messanger access to you contacts, but what anout whatsapp? Any app with access to your contacts may have sold them. And even if you have none the other party might, or even a third party.
- morgante 11y ago> What you view on linkedin goes to fb and vice versa. That's completely unfounded speculation, and I'd love to see any citation for it. I'm inherently skeptical because for these companies their most important asset is their data. The idea that they would share that data willy-nilly with third parties makes no business sense.
- LoSboccacc 11y agoit is indeed speculation, but at least anecdotal, not totally unfunded http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-network/ http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo... http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/2009/09/14/linkedin-people-you-may-know-privacy-contrversy/ http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/2009/09/14/linkedin-people-yo... there are quite a few instances of weird guess about the people you might know suggestions of course the actual source is kept as one of their best secrets.
- morgante 11y agoNeither of those links you shared provided any evidence whatsoever for LinkedIn and Facebook having a secret bidirectional data sharing relationship. The far more intelligent explanation is that suggestions are, as LinkedIn repeatedly emphasizes, based on imported contacts. Note that even if you don't import contacts, the other person might have. Try using Occam's razor before jumping to unprofitable conspiracy theories. (Again, why on earth do you think Facebook would voluntarily share data with Facebook?)
- nsgi 11y agoDo you have her number in your phone?
- Swizec 11y agoSometimes yes, sometimes no. But I don't remember giving FB permission to view my phone numbers.
- Nadya 11y agoIf you have the FB app installed it has access to your contacts.
- tedunangst 11y agoThere are phones for which that may not be true.
- Swizec 11y agoLet me rephrase, I don't want it to have access to my contacts and did not realize that it does. Now that I know it likely does, I am discomforted.
- zoul 11y agoAt least on iOS it doesn’t, unless you gave it the permission yourself.
- balladeer 11y agoHopefully in Android Marshmallow this feature is not again shot down just before release. Granular permission control is one single thing I am waiting for in Android 6.0 because that is the only feature I wanted to root my phone for.
- Estragon 11y agoWhat does the FB app give you that the website doesn't anyway? I had no idea why I would want it on my phone when FB was pushing it on me.
- yaur 11y ago> I don't know how they do it. But they do it. A big avenue for this is phone numbers. If you have exchanged phone numbers or texted and either person has the facebook app installed on their phone they may show up on "people you may know"
- CPLX 11y agoThis is almost certainly it. It comes from adding each other to your smartphones address book so a name shows instead of a number.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- aianus 11y agoI don't see the problem. A friend request is hardly that threatening. If you don't accept his/her fb request, how can he/she bother you?
- Swizec 11y agoIt's not about the friend request per se, it's about being able to find people. A large part of your FB profile is public. At the very least, I now know your last name. Maybe even your birthday. In a lot of cases, that's enough to perform some light identity theft. Or I can find your exact address. Or I can find out where you work, or just see all the places you like hanging out at and so on and so on. I don't want to be that easily findable by strangers, which is why I consistently use a "fake" identity online and offline. It's still me, everyone knows me as Swizec Teller, the name just doesn't have anything to do with my legal first and last name. And my legal name is purposefully difficult to tie with this identity unless you have certain background knowledge.
- manigandham 11y agoThere are privacy settings for all of this... it's not forced in any way. Take the 5 mins to setup everything and it all works.
- zyxley 11y agoExcept in cases like those noted in the EFF's documents, where FB will change your publicly listed information without your consent and remove your ability to change it back.
- rmc 11y agoIt's almost like computer security. One little vulnerbility might be nothing. But it allows someone to pivot to something else. Which allows them to pivot to the next level. etc. etc.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
- robryk 11y agoCould it be that she has searched for and found your FB profile before you searched for her?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ferrari8608 11y agoIt's probably due to the Tinder app being tied to your Facebook account.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]