Facebook, Where Are You Getting These Crazy Friend Suggestions From?
This morning, I woke up to find an inbox full of readers freaked out about Facebook friend suggestions. What's the big deal about that? Privacy-minded Facebook users can't figure out where these suggestions are coming from, and aren't happy with the possibilities.
Dawn gave us some examples of friends that Facebook is suggesting for her:
A couple of examples of people facebook has suggested to me (again, none of the addresses were imported to facebook) - a client (work email stored on my outlook contacts, but that is it, no mutual friends or common networks), the current wife of an ex-boyfriend, a former co-worker from 10+ years ago (again no current email anywhere), my now deceased mother-in-law (this one puzzles me less, but she died two years ago, why is she coming up now??)
Freaky. So what's going on here? Reader Megan turned up this blog post, where Tony Ruscoe formulated a theory about why this is happening, then tested it with his own Gmail contacts list, Facebook account, and some accomplices. What did they discover? Well, when you import your e-mail contacts and choose to skip over and not add certain people to your friends list, Facebook doesn't forget. Facebook also forms relationships based on other people's imported contact lists, meaning that even if you've never imported your own lists, Facebook sees your address in other people's contact lists and figures out relationships based on that.
How can you get Facebook to cut it out? 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.
How Facebook Uses Your "Skipped" Webmail Contacts [Blogoscoped]
Remove Contacts Imported using the Friend Finder [Facebook]
(Photo: avlxyz)
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Comments:
"Privacy-minded Facebook user" is an oxymoron...
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!
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or, you could just not sign up on social networking sites specifically designed to--*gasp*--network and put people in touch!
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.
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?
@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.
@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
@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.
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..
@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.
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?
@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?
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.
@veg-o-matic: I'm just so sick of facebook sometimes. I yelled at my buddy last night. We were out at a bar having a drink, and he pulls out his iPhone, and within a minute is announcing to the freaking world that we are at the bar having a drink. Enough! Drink your beer, have some conversation, and then we'll GTFO. No need to tell the world.
In fact, the next time I'm on the toilet, I'm going to announce it on Facebook.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
So Facebook is slowly becoming Skynet...?
This won't be a problem when I start the internet's first anti-social networking site, Fuck-Off-Book.
@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.
@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.
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.
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...
Can I get that picture above on a t-shirt?