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I also had this recently too. I got given a friend suggestion of someone I haven't seen in twenty years. We have no shared FB friends, nor location, nor schooli

by junto 10y ago

I also had this recently too. I got given a friend suggestion of someone I haven't seen in twenty years. We have no shared FB friends, nor location, nor schooling / college education. I have her email address in my contacts which has been shared with WhatsApp. Curiously, there should be no way to directly link my FB account with WhatsApp. I haven't shared my mobile number with FB, and I haven't shared my FB account email address with WhatsApp. Somehow they have tied the two together. I've never installed any other FB app on my phone, and my FB account is only a month old. I found that particularly chilling. The friend suggestion doesn't have my email address nor mobile number, and we live in different countries. I'd love to figure out how they did it. I even use a pseudonym on FB.

PeterisP 10y ago
That's simple - whenever any of your personal or business contacts grants access to their contact list to some app, "everyone in the world" obtains a mapping between your mobile phone number (that they had), your full name and nicknames (that they entered manually) and likely your other identities as well (e.g. emails, various IM providers, etc) that they linked to you in their contact list. It's the same with facial recognition - to avoid it, it's not enough to never post your pictures, you'd also need to ensure that noone who knows you would ever tag you in some picture they have.