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\"Privacy-minded Facebook user\" is an oxymoron...
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@secret_curse:
Every week, you hear about another Facebook privacy issue.
Some friends keep asking me if I am on it, and I have to keep telling them that I never will, because of these issues.
Facebook will die in 2 years like MySpace did (recent massive layoff) when something new comes along.
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Phew, this makes a lot more sense now. My aunt has a Facebook account she only uses for stalking. (She has some issues with personal boundaries and tact and things like that, but we love her anyway.) She has no friends, we are not in the same network, etc...and yet, she showed up on my suggested friends yesterday. I honestly don't care, because my profile is private and I don't have anything to hide anyway, but I did find it curious. I haven't uploaded a contact list, but I bet she has!
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It also bases a lot of them on friends you have defriended. You would think that the software would be up to date enough not to base your people you may know on deleted info.
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@Smashville: Also friends that defriended you. I never would had known, had they not been suggested as people I may know.
\"Facebook also forms relationships based on other people's imported contact lists\"
They recently recommended a friend to me; the two of us have no mutual friends, and I've never imported my e-mail contacts. I concluded that he must have imported his e-mail contacts, and they notified me because of that. It's pretty obvious, really.
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Wow this was really confusing me until now. It used to always show me friends of friends but all these people I've never heard of with no mutual friends started showing up. Granted I did find one person I haven't seen or heard from forever but it is still somewhat uncomfortable.
I'm utterly freaked since an old boss I cannot fucking stand and another old boss' wife (who I also hated working with) are regularly offered as potential new friends.
One suggestion Facebook has been giving me lately is this staff member at my alma mater. She died a few months ago.
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@TCama: Yeah, Facebook will every so often offer me a girl I did know who killed herself about a year ago - I guess no one's gone in and memorialized or whatever it is their Facebook
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wow, I'm not the only one.
This morning Facebook suggested a new friend. The name sounded familiar and I couldn't quite place it. I clicked and saw that we had no friends in common and that's weird. In the past, facebook only suggested friends of friends you weren't already friends with (does that makes sense?).
Turns out the new friend was an old fling. How facebook found her, I dunno.
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They're watching... always watching...
Am I the only one who says: what the hell did you expect? You signed up for a SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE.
Get over it or don't sign up.
@JGKojak: To me, it just sounds like Facebook is actually doing the social networking it claims to do in the first place. If users didn't want it in the first place, they should have used a blog or suchlike, not a freaking social networking site.
@JGKojak: I don't know about you, but I created a facebook to keep up with college friends who moved away and family members who don't live near me, not to be stalked by some random slob who was in my Biology class. Some people might just want to friend every Tom, Dick and Harry, but some of us just find it a convenient way to keep track of people we ALREADY KNOW.
@JGKojak: To be honest, I think a lot of people are more curious about the methods they're using than shocked that they're using them. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself...but I find shit like this fascinating, not creepy.
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I can't imagine what is going through people's heads when they allow Facebook to access their contact lists?
Don't you have to give Facebook your email password for that?
Seems crazy to me.
You can start by removing any stored contact lists that Facebook has for you. If you're logged in to Facebook, do that at this link. If you want to take it a step further, change your privacy settings so you're not visible in search results.
Seriously, if the emails about this all just started coming in to Consumerist, then Facebook's technology must have recently changed. If this kind of thing is really bothering someone, they probably shouldn't be using Facebook in the first place. If, however, they're just kinda going WTF? That's odd and sharing this development for entertainment purposes, I guess I can consider myself entertained. Or not. I don't use Facebook so it's all anecdotal for me.
@CheritaChen: It does seem to have recently changed. Until a week or two ago, every suggestion was someone I knew or someone that I had a friend in common with.
Now, I keep getting suggestions for people I have no contacts in common with and whom I've never heard of (or wish I never had). That is the creepy change that has inspired a mass of \"wtf\" responses...
@CheritaChen: Yes, but it's goal wasn't ever to put you in touch with people you don't know - which this has the great potential of doing.
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Another reason not to import your email contact list or hand over your email password when you use these sites.
Sheesh, people. What did you expect? They have access to a gold mine of data (your email contact list) and they won't take advantage of it?
I had something slightly different, but still creepy happen. Yesterday I got an email to an account not connected to facebook that my husband I invited myself to be friends on facebook. Neither of us sent this invitation obviously and neither of us has been dumb enough to upload our contacts into facebook (at least on purpose?) I want to know how the hell and why the fuck they did this. Also is there any sort of way to contact facebook with complaints like this? I couldn't find it..
@frodoUnderhill:
I had the same thing happen to me yesterday. It was a Reminder that Lynn had invited Lynn to be a friend. I thought maybe I had done a test when I first signed up to see what an invite looked like and the reminder cycle had just kicked in.
I got an invite from a relative yesterday, and we're both already on facebook. I wonder if there was some sort of error going on yesterday.
So that explains why Facebook suggested I be friends with my landlady's brother, who I emailed once to coordinate installation of a new refrigerator. I don't like this...
Don't sign up for facebook?
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Excuse me,, but what's the big fricking deal? It's not as if they make you add them as a friend. Just ignore them...like I do.
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@BeThisWay: bingo!
or follow the steps for deleting old contact list imports.
or hell - clean out your contact lists period.
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Facebook keeps suggesting that I become friends with my old landlord from when I lived in Washington DC. At first I thought I must have given them my DC address at some point (I lived in an English basement apartment in his townhouse, so the address was the same, I was just 'Apt B'). I guess I must have had some emails from him in my gmail account.
Here's the kicker, you don't have to befriend everyone Facebook suggests to you and if someone wants to be your friend whom you don't like, you can ignore them.
It isn't difficult.
I do not have a facebook or myspace page, but I do get almost everyday friend requests from them.
The emails do not use my name, it just addresses to me using my email.
There is no link to stop receiving these emails, I just send them to junk.
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@mayrc87: Probably phishing attempts as suggested above. After the criminals run out of bank names to email to your inbox, they start on social networking sites...
@mayrc87:
Those are likely spam or phishing attempts, and may not even be from Facebook. Its popular enough that many spamers/phishers are spoofing it. Real invites from Facebook contain a link to unsubscribe in the fine print at the bottom.
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@mayrc87: oh, and not only have I never given facebook access to that account, but I scrupulously remove all contacts from gmail regularly, so none of their addresses would be found.
A few weeks ago an old blind date appeared in my suggested friends box, so I looked at his profile and found that we had no friends in common. Curious, I looked through my other suggestions (I usually ignore them) and found others with no mutual friends, but a history of writing to my gmail account.
My gmail is for non-friends and business only, so the suggestions were random: my old pilates teacher, my fellow volunteers from a project in 2005, and a few old blind dates.
About a day later, a facebook blog reported the issue, and all those random suggestions disappeared for a few days, only to return yesterday. So facebook is aware of what's happening and choosing to keep the email suggestions.
@crawdaddy: oh, and not only have I never given facebook access to my account, but I scrupulously remove all contacts there, so none of their addresses would be found.
Alright here's what you do:
If you like what Facebook does: Keep using it! It's free and all your friends are on it! Hurray!
If you don't like what Facebook does: DO NOT SIGN UP. Or if you're already signed up cancel and delete your account. Nobody has a gun to your head telling you to use the website.
So Facebook is slowly becoming Skynet...?
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This won't be a problem when I start the internet's first anti-social networking site, Fuck-Off-Book.
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i wouldn't mind the friend suggestions if 1) you can turn it off or 2) at the very least, if you X out the person's name, don't have them pop up anymore. i said no once, and i'll keep saying no!
Just the other day I had a suggestion of one of my 'online friends' who had just joined.
I did briefly wonder why/how it showed her as a suggestion, but just assumed it was because I had previously searched using her e-mail address to see if she had a profile (at the time she did not).
Seeing as I did/have NOT allowed Facebook to automatically import contacts, the only thing I could come up with is that it is somehow keeping track of e-mail searches you've performed in the past.
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An app on my phone made a facebook account so I could play a stupid game. When I logged in to see wtf was going on it suggested people it had no reason to know that I knew. Im pretty sure what they are doing is shady and it pisses me off because im such an online privacy freak
Yeah the friend suggestions are annoying, but just ex out of them. Even more annoying is group suggestions. For the millionth time I do not want to join \"When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.\"
Isn't this what the stupid website is supposed to do? Network you with potential friends?
Hey it's not like you are friends w/ them they are suggesting... so stop freaking out...
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Facebook has become self-aware. I saw a movie about this - it won't end well.
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Are we talking about the little sidebar that says \"you may know blah\" that changes to a different person every time you refresh your homepage? Or are we talking about emailed friend suggestions that are coming from facebook itself and not your friends suggesting friends?
Considering I'm in a university network, I get lots of random \"You and blah both went to the university of ...\" showing up on my home page. I don't find it very effective, since my alma mater is not a small school.
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I honestly don't see what the problem is here. Facebook doesn't know that person whose email address is in your contacts is dead, or that you haven't spoken to so-and-so from your company for forever. If you don't know/don't want to friend the person, just click the x, it's that simple. I've never had someone pop up in the friends suggestion list that I couldn't reason out how they got there.
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yet another reason not to join - my stalker sends me email. i never gave him my email address [am pretty sure i know how he got it, not a story for here] but i get the feeling that if i sign up for facebook and ask it to check my address book for people i know, somehow he might show up on my facebook friend suggestions, or my page on HIS suggestions just because he sent me email [which i have saved as evidence because in this state email counts in the stalking laws]
@catastrophegirl - brand new homeowner:
Go into your settings and change it so that your profile is not viewable in searches or suggestions.
@realserendipity: or just not join. from what i am reading here, since he has my email address, that means not only is my email address in his address book, his email address is in mine since i am saving the emails as evidence. at some point this might involve facebook telling him that i exist on there
@catastrophegirl - brand new homeowner: I have a friend on FB that set her account to full private. She and I have each others email addys, but I didn't know she was on until I saw her comment on something. She had to send me a friend request, since I couldn't look her up or contact her through FB. So if you do the full private thing, he won't be able to look you up. I think the worst that could happen is if FB had his email list(and you don't import yours), you might see his profile in the \"Suggestions\" on your homepage.
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You'd also be seeing this if you bought a Palm Pre recently and sync'd it with your google and facebook accounts.
I like it.
Expanded suggestions are a good idea. If I don't like the person, I can just click the 'x' and they are gone.
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i've been getting friend suggestions for people that i don't know at all and have nothing in coming with. what's even freakier is some of them now are taking on names of people i do know or might know (same school). i'm 99% sure these are spam accounts, and it really bugs that facebook isn't monitoring them and that you can't permanently \"x\" them out of your friend suggestions.
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Great timing on this post. This explains a very unusual \"friend suggestion\" I noticed today.
FACEBOOK IS SENTIENT!!! RUN FOR THE BOMB SHELTER!!!
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Very loooong story short, I was on the mass email list from this message board I go to. There were 100+ Gmail contacts on there. These dopes all ended up in my contact list, but I removed them long ago.
Some of the people on the list did not do the same...because they are popping up all over my Friend Suggestion page. They must have run through their contacts and now, I am getting suggestions from them despite not uploading them via the contact finder. There were so many of them that they have over taken the suggestion page.
Why the heck is this such a big deal? I don't mind how facebook wants to figure out connections between people. They suggest people and I don't have to make them my friends. No worries. And if you \"x\" the person on the suggested friends page, you never see them again!
And yeah, you give up some privacy on Facebook but to me it is TOTALLY WORTH IT. I have an amazing network of friends and family that I can interact with even though we're spread across the country, AND I have a professional network of other graduate students and we support one another through school.
Seriously, they aren't forcing me to give my info to others, so I'm not worried about it.
x-ing the person from the suggested friends list does not at all mean that they will never show up again. Believe me, there are many people I have x'ed over and over.
I don't mind who sees my Facebook page or who pops up as a friend suggestion, but I have had a few that seem odd. One in particular I know, but he has no friends on FB and neither of us has each other's email address. I think there must be a 2nd- or 3rd-degree linking process based upon a mutual email connection. I have also had a couple of suggestions where it noted that 'this person is also in the Los Angeles network'. I suppose that means I probably know him then, right???
i'm already invisible to searches and it randomly spammed my not-on-facebook list (which I've NEVER invited) today.... including an alternate email for myself.
As for all the folks who are being nasty and saying why did you sign up to begin with... if I WANTED to invite all those people, I would have already. The \"skip\" button means DON'T email them please! Facebook needs to work that out!
I had a similar incident last night. A friend from Mexico popped up as a suggestion. While I was first toying with facebook, I did let it search my Yahoo contacts, although no one on there came up as a suggestion. I thought about it and realized I was in said friend's contacts and Facebook must have made the suggestion to me based on that. While I found it a tad odd that it made the suggestion that way, I certainly didn't get worked up over it.
I have no memory of providing Facebook access to any of my contacts when I started my profile (although I freely admit I may have and don't remember.) Lately it's been pushing someone I only have on my Livejournal friends list, no friends in common on FB, that I don't recall ever sending an e-mail to...
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Same deal for me. Vendor stored in Outlook appears on my work computer several weeks ago. Will not go away. What's the deal?
Yes, Facebook recommends you \"friends\" based on your contacts and your contacts' contacts. DUH. That's pretty much how we all know it works. There's no reason to be \"unhappy\" about this unless you're a moron. Don't put up anything in public you don't want people to see, kids!
So, the problem is that Facebook is suggesting that you befriend people you actually know? Weird. Probably would be better if they suggested total strangers, no?
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I didn't notice this when I was knocking around on it last night. None of my emails are imported or anything.
I haven't even been doing apps.
The worst one I've gotten was an ex, who I left over a decade ago because he was abusive... Then he stalked me. We have no friends in common, and everyone I knew back then that I am still in contact with knew the whole story and wanted him dead. Yet he popped up. The only explanation I can come up with is if he found my school address and put it in his contacts list... Which would just be scary!
So that's why Facebook suggested I friend a recruiter I'm working with. Still, it's downright creepy.
I guess you haven't heard about how FB will not really delete your account if you tell them to. They just suspend it - even though they tell you it's been canceled, the data is still on their servers. Seriously not cool.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-147040-100x100.png\")
Ah, so that explains it. I've been getting requests for people that also happened to be in the classes that I was a teaching assistant for. It must be pulling it from my Gmail account, which I used as a SMTP server for my school email (the school wouldn't let you use theirs unless you were on their network).
Weird.
Cheers!
I'm more annoyed by the constant spam of 'become a fan' suggestions. I'm using the site to network with friends so the friend suggestions, even if very unlikely, are fine and dandy.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-131260-100x100.png\")
I *just* publicly ranted about this very subject!
I got a friend suggestion for someone I bought soccer tickets from on Craigslist two years ago. But I NEVER set it up to import any of my email contacts (or peruse my email for people not listed in my address book).
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I have been getting face book event invites on my work e-mail and i NEVER put that in there...
What. The. Hell. I have never given Facebook permission to look at any of my accounts. Ever. I'm a technical person, I've been on the net a long time, and I just don't do that sort of thing.
Yet somehow, the guy who sold me my potting wheel has shown up in my suggestions list. We don't have any mutual FB friends. He could be a friend of a friend of a friend, but if that's the case, why would it suggest the third-degree guy rather than the second-degree guy?
Annoyed now.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-10572-100x100.png\")
Thanks so much for this!!! I noticed a week or two ago that this was happening and had realized right away that it was doing it from my email addresses (based on a name popping up with whom I'd not talked to in years) and didn't know how it started or how to stop it. I've purposely never clicked on the \"mine my email for friends\" option, so I'm not sure how that happened, but I am not pleased.
yeah sorry, but for anyone who's questioning \"why the big deal?\".... I don't want to see photos of people known to be deceased popping up on what's meant to be a fun site, totally disrespectful and potentially hurtful to people.
Also, ex's are meant to , in theory, drop off of the face of the earth. Do I need to see a new photo of an ex with their new spouse, a year or so after a split ? Even if just to \"x\" them out? Hell no.
Does FB not realize that people are capable of finding their own damn \"friends\" ?
facebook should have to state how they collect and use information. I have a facebook account but not in my real full name, the email registered for this account is a yahoo one, but I got a friend suggestion from someone who i only contacted a couple times on a gmail account, and I never uploaded my contacts. So even if this other person uploaded her contact list with my gmail address, then how the fuck did facebook make the connection from my gmail account to my facebook account which has no reference to gmail. maybe google is somehow in cahoots with facebook. I don't care about all these stupid friend suggestions, but I'd just like to know what information of mine they are using and how they are getting it!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-890779-100x100.png\")
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Can I get that picture above on a t-shirt?
@Pibbs: I'd never give a business who wants me to stop talking about something my business. What the hell kind of business does that?
@Pibbs: Ha. Nice. I enjoy it as well.
Ranks right up there with this one, which I should get put onto a shirt someday. That picture looks old, but last time I was there, the sign was up, and I did love it so.
@Pibbs: I just want to know where that is. I want to go there and chill.
@Pibbs: Perhaps a This is a No Facebook Zone.
@Pibbs:
Cafe Press?