Facebook e-mail lists my contacts?

Cap'n Jack

Cap'n Jack

Final Approach
Joined
Jun 25, 2006
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Nebraska
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Cap'n Jack
I'm not a member of Facebook. I got an invitation from someone to look at their facebook page and join Facebook. The e-mail I received had a listing of people that I both know and are on Facebook.



The interesting things are:
  • It was 100% correct
  • The people almost certainly do not know each other
  • People listed are from all over the world (supports the point above)
How did they get this list? The only place I know where all these people are listed is in my outlook address book. I use Earthlink as an ISP (in case there is a corporate connection).
 
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When your friends joined facebook they had facebook look through their email contacts for their friends who may also be on facebook. Your email was in their contact list. So when you joined, you were already linked together. When I joined I got the same thing. When I added additional email addresses I use (gmail, hotmail) it then notified me of the people I knew only through those e-mail addresses because I was in their contact list.
 
I deleted my Facebook account this weekend.
It was way too invasive for me even before they started the new deal where friends of friends of friends could access your personal info.
Facebook =:nono:
 
EdFred said:
When your friends joined facebook they had facebook look through their email contacts for their friends who may also be on facebook. Your email was in their contact list. So when you joined, you were already linked together. When I joined I got the same thing. When I added additional email addresses I use (gmail, hotmail) it then notified me of the people I knew only through those e-mail addresses because I was in their contact list.
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Ed- that makes sense. I didn't think about my e-mail being provided to a database by someone (actually, lots of someones) other than me.

I haven't joined as I understand Facebook has privacy issues and I want to understand what they are before joining up. My guess is people really don't understand the power of a good RDB and the connections that can be made with only a "little" data, and the tracking from the various embedded ads.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
I deleted my Facebook account this weekend.
It was way too invasive for me even before they started the new deal where friends of friends of friends could access your personal info.
Facebook =:nono:
Click to expand...
Dave- what information do you have to post to join?
 
I'm beginning to notice more "friend suggestions" of people that I knew at one time or worked with at one time showing up. Not "Friends of Friends" but out of the blue "Facebook suggests you might know this person" ... spooky
 
gkainz said:
I'm beginning to notice more "friend suggestions" of people that I knew at one time or worked with at one time showing up. Not "Friends of Friends" but out of the blue "Facebook suggests you might know this person" ... spooky
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Greg- I've gotten that from LinkedIn for a long time. It's just comparing past employers in the database. You should see people you may have known in school showing up if this infomration is in the database.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Dave- what information do you have to post to join?
Click to expand...

Its been so long since I joined I forget Jack - when I say personal info, I mean stuff I put up about vacations and photos of self, family....which I intended only for "friends", not their interpretation of who should have access to it.
Maybe I am being curmudgeon-ey but I am not thrilled with many of these social networking sites...seems like they are in the news every week as well.
 
Dave- you're not being curmudgeon-ey, just smart IMHO. In this day and age, I consider practically anything I post to be out there for public consumption.

As for family vacations pix, I post those after the fact for family. In practice, I'm pretty sure no one gives a s*** about my vacation pix outside of a few friends and family.
 
Dave you can lock that down. There are plenty friends of friends stuff that I can't see on other pages.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Greg- I've gotten that from LinkedIn for a long time. It's just comparing past employers in the database. You should see people you may have known in school showing up if this information is in the database.
Click to expand...

I get this from LinkedIn a lot too.....
And I've never even been to school.
I just guess I've run into a lot of people over the years that want to get even with me...:dunno:
 
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