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"I'm guessing that what happened here is that these people have my email address in their address book." I don't think this is necessarily true. In my experien
by tcskeptic 17y ago
"I'm guessing that what happened here is that these people have my email address in their address book."
I don't think this is necessarily true. In my experience most of these suggestions have come from friend-of-friend commonality. For example, two of the people you are friends with on Facebook are also friends with these people, so Facebook thinks you know them.
Even if your thoughts on what happened in this case are correct, this kind of connection making, social graph building utilities if you will, are so fundamental to the purpose of Facebook that your objection seems odd to me. This kind of stuff is exactly why many people join.
- jgrahamc 17y agoI would think you were right if it were not for the fact that the email was sent to an email address that I have not registered with Facebook. That means that they can't have identified my Facebook profile and must have been going off on the presence the email address used in the address books of those people in the email.
- ori_b 17y agoNo, Facebook definitely looks into email addresses from address books to make suggestions. I know because Facebook has made suggestions of people I have no common friend-of-friends with. The only interaction I had with them was via email (mostly for work-related questions).
- loup-vaillant 17y agoEven then, if you can reach the transitive closure of your friends, (and vice versa), then your profile is just as public as a personal web page. Unfortunately, Facebook strongly suggests otherwise (you are supposed to connect with "friends", and external links arbour big warnings flags about privacy on the scary open web). I think this mere mismatch is creepy by itself.