Strange occurrence in Facebook's "People you may know"

[Artsu Tharaz]

So, I know someone who has a facebook. On their facebook they have only one friend, and as far as I know the only details they have in there are their name and date of birth.

Now, in their "people you may know" list, facebook has included all kinds of people that they know. Family, work colleagues, church members. None of these people have anything to do with the one friend they have on facebook.

So, how could facebook be generating the "people you may know" list to include these people? How do they know who this person knows?

What possible explanations are there for this?

 

[Hadoblado]

While I don't know the specifics on how it knows, this isn't surprising to me. Facebook is spooky af.

- Their last name might be a starter, showing family members and friends of family members.
- If their family has filled in their relations, they may be pre-listed
- They'll know your friends location of ip address? This combined with age would give a ballpark monkeysphere.
- photos that they've been tagged in?
- Does it have access to cookies? Could it tell what other sites they've been on?

I really don't know much about it, but it does scare me.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

While I don't know the specifics on how it knows, this isn't surprising to me. Facebook is spooky af.

hm. I don't like this one little bit.

- Their last name might be a starter, showing family members and friends of family members.

but there are plenty of people with the same name plus how do they even have family connections like that? I mean, these family members have different last names.

- If their family has filled in their relations, they may be pre-listed

I don't know how any of these family members would even know about this person's account, I mean, as I've stated, it's a fairly common name, and they barely use the thing.

- They'll know your friends location of ip address? This combined with age would give a ballpark monkeysphere.

What, like, knowing the exact identity of the person?

- photos that they've been tagged in?

They have no photos up.

- Does it have access to cookies? Could it tell what other sites they've been on?

This is all that I could think of. Linking up with other sites, but I mentioned this to them and it still didn't make much sense.

I really don't know much about it, but it does scare me.

Yeah it's like, what the fuck.

As far as I know, nothing they've put on their profile could identify them as being the person they are, but facebook seems to know exactly who they are, and who their family is.

What the fuck facebook. What the hell kind of data are they storying behind the scenes and linking people based on?

I've personally never observed anything like this on my own facebook. I just get friends of friends and randoms.

I guess an interesting experiment would be to make a new facebook with only my name and date of birth and see what comes up in the people I may know thingo.

Facebook, you've taken things too far!!!!

 

[Black Rose]

I lost my facebook password 2 years ago. No access since then.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

I lost my facebook password 2 years ago. No access since then.

It's been one year, not two!!

 

[Black Rose]

It's been one year, not two!!

My sense of time is horrible.

I have no access to my two other channels on YouTube.

Needed a whole new email, a new google account.

 

[TheManBeyond]

Ahhh Facebook only masters can cause love and hate among the tribe.
Yeah I think it has to do with cookies, your location (Facebook messenger has a tool that shows your location to people so it is not weird at all), visited profiles, games you play there, pictures, age. Many things. Me myself have done some pretty transgressive stalking there. So why wouldnt a computer do it better than me?
It is not scary. Stalking is not stalking anymore. Everyone clics on everything.
U can configurate it to be extremely private if u are retarded enough tho.
In my view if u are scared of Facebook then u are also scared of going out to the streets and have a coffee in a bar.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

User statistics, location, the network of the first-level contacts (his friend might not be connected to anyone on his recommendation list, but maybe that friend is connected to people who are) and loads of variables go into the recommendation system. Would people be shocked to hear, for example, that as long as you are logged into facebook, you give facebook permission to track all your browsing you do online besides your activities on facebook?

Predicting your personal preferences is facebook's service to advertisers. Thats their whole business model, and that is why Zuckerberg wants everyone to share as much information about themselves as possible.

 

[TransientMoment]

Facebook collects information about you associated with your IP address. That information is collected via Facebook ads or widgets on other websites, such as the Facebook "Share" button. If a site says "Connect via Facebook", they already have info coming from Facebook and they are sending it back to Facebook, even if that data isn't sent via XSS. Other people you know who have visited those sites or sent you "share links" (loaded, id-tagged URLs that go to specific data-collection pages before redirection to the site of interest), are associated with you. This list of people can then be filtered by IP-address location, collection from school records, driver's license records, and relative time-of-visit. In short, the internet knows more about you than you would like to think. It's also betraying you by selling your info to the highest bidder. Don't post anything you'll regret!

Edit: Your browser says alot about you even without your IP address being legit. Learn more here:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/tracker
Edit 2: And yes, there is tracking stuff on that page, but I believe the tracking links only work if you click on them. After all, EFF is against tracking.

 

[Reluctantly]

I was told that even one friend can cause their list of friends to show up on your "you may know". It probaby takes what is relatable in your profile with that other person's friends.
Edit: oh and Facebook can track your location too and cross-reference based on that as well.

Or they could have a lot more information about people then people realize.

I think it's more the former.

 

[Black Rose]

You are separated by 4 degrees on facebook.
That means you can be connected to anyone on facebook through 4 people.

also take a look at this:

Gay men 'can be identified by their Facebook friends'

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

I'm not actually "scared", it's just weird as fuck.

By the sounds of it, facebook is using ip or whatever to know exactly the identity of the person. Then, they must have it stored in their system who is related to who, who knows who from work, and... even church somehow.

They just happen to have a lot more information than I expected.

 

[Happy]

Does this person use any other Facebook services? WhatsApp, Instagram, etc? WhatsApp is probs the riskiest seeing as it gives Facebook access to your phone contact list.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Does this person use any other Facebook services? WhatsApp, Instagram, etc? WhatsApp is probs the riskiest seeing as it gives Facebook access to your phone contact list.

No. Plus, they probably don't even have a lot of these people as phone contacts.

This has gotta me some kind of behind-the-scenes networking* that facebook does. I can't see any other explanation.

* I mean like, creating network diagrams of people

 

[Username909]

Computers/phones are far more aware of each other and how they relate to "each other" than people know.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Btw, this was resolved.

It was indeed due to phone contacts (I wrongly assumed it wasn't).