'Friend Suggestions' on Facebook?

Biodegradable

I notice that after looking people up, that I will later get their name as a friend suggestion. The question I have is, does this also mean that I pop up somewhere on their page as a friend suggestion? I was looking at the pages of two people recently, who I knew about a year ago, and when I went back to look at their pages again, suddenly both of their 'lists of friends' were no longer visible to public.

I always make sure to use my fake facebook account if I want to have a good gawk at someone I really have a thing for, but maybe I should start using this account more often! There were no friend suggestions before though. You could just look up people's profiles and they'd never know about it.

Wishox

My suggestion ? Get off Facebook, I work in IT and left it years ago, Nothing good will ever come from trading your personal inforrmation for a "Free" service

madmaggie

This creeps me out when using Facebook. I once looked up a doctor, thinking I'd get his business page, instead it was his personal page. I was afraid he'd think I was a mad bunny boiler.

Trigger Happy

People in my phone contacts list sometimes appear in my suggested friends list. Does that mean they have been looking me up or facebook is in cahoots with my phone?!

Sinus pain

madmaggie wrote: »

This creeps me out when using Facebook. I once looked up a doctor, thinking I'd get his business page, instead it was his personal page. I was afraid he'd think I was a mad bunny boiler.

Exact same thing happened to me recently!

Trigger Happy

Trigger Happy wrote: »

People in my phone contacts list sometimes appear in my suggested friends list. Does that mean they have been looking me up or facebook is in cahoots with my phone?!

Check if the app has permission to access your contacts.

Irishphotodesk

Trigger Happy wrote: »

People in my phone contacts list sometimes appear in my suggested friends list. Does that mean they have been looking me up or facebook is in cahoots with my phone?!

Chances are you gave Facebook access to your contacts (app permissions).

I assume you have Facebook as an app on your phone.

The high horse brigade

Trigger Happy wrote: »

People in my phone contacts list sometimes appear in my suggested friends list. Does that mean they have been looking me up or facebook is in cahoots with my phone?!

Facebook most likely has all your contact data, especially if you installed the app. I have a mate who has never been on Facebook but yet Facebook have created a shadow profile with all his info they have gathered from everyone else. Creepy stuff.

I closed my Facebook account earlier in the year and before doing so downloaded a copy of all the data. It was eye opening

Biodegradable

sugarman wrote: »

Yes. Thats how suggestions work.

That's annoying. So anytime I want to have a good gawk at someone I'll have to do it from my fake account.

And for all the people who appear on my friend suggestion list - have they been looking at my profile?

Biodegradable

Wishox wrote: »

My suggestion ? Get off Facebook, I work in IT and left it years ago, Nothing good will ever come from trading your personal inforrmation for a "Free" service

What personal info? I've a few photos up there, and the city that I live in. It's not like I have my phone number given, or even my date of birth. What is the worst that could hypothetically go wrong?

If Mark Zuckerberg wanted to stalk me, all he'd be able to see would be who I'm friends with!

Biodegradable

Biodegradable wrote: »

What personal info? I've a few photos up there, and the city that I live in. It's not like I have my phone number given, or even my date of birth. What is the worst that could hypothetically go wrong?

If Mark Zuckerberg wanted to stalk me, all he'd be able to see would be who I'm friends with!

People have this thing about it (mainly so they can tell you they don’t have it) but you’re right. In reality there’s an abundance of controls to allow people to see only what you want them to see.
Even if you had something like your phone number visible to friends? So what? If someone is going to do something dodgy with your phone number then you’d need to be looking at the quality of the friends, not facebook.

Biodegradable

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

People have this thing about it (mainly so they can tell you they don’t have it) but you’re right. In reality there’s an abundance of controls to allow people to see only what you want them to see.
Even if you had something like your phone number visible to friends? So what? If someone is going to do something dodgy with your phone number then you’d need to be looking at the quality of the friends, not facebook.

Yes. I have heard though, that before companies hire certain candidates, that what they can do in order to know more about you, is track what you are interested in and then make a fake ad available to match that interest. Once you subscribe to that ad, they can then see everything about you that your friends can see. I heard something like that from someone who works in security, and that apparently nearly every company has a person who does this when screening for new employees.

The high horse brigade

Biodegradable wrote: »

What personal info? I've a few photos up there, and the city that I live in. It's not like I have my phone number given, or even my date of birth. What is the worst that could hypothetically go wrong?

If Mark Zuckerberg wanted to stalk me, all he'd be able to see would be who I'm friends with!

The Name, address, email and phone numbers of you and all your contacts for a start. Each and every site and advert you visit and your location and IP address when you visit. The Facebook like button on pages is tracking you. You are giving up lots more than you realise

https://fortune.com/2018/03/21/facebook-personal-data-cambridge-analytica/

Biodegradable

The high horse brigade wrote: »

The Name, address, email and phone numbers of you and all your contacts for a start.

Incorrect, they can't get my phone number unless they ring up one of my friends and them for it. I have not made my phone number available to facebook.

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Each and every site and advert you visit and your location and IP address when you visit. The Facebook like button on pages is tracking you. You are giving up lots more than you realise

So they can see what sites I visit while I'm logged into facebook? or they can see whatever I do on my PC at any time?

Always Tired

A few weeks ago I was chatting to a girl i know on fb messenger and we sent a few messages back and forth about a girl we used to know, only mentioning her first name. The girl we were talking about is friends with the girl I was chatting to on facebook but not with me (we don't like each other at all)

After the conversation ended the girl kept coming up on my suggested friends list, and she was never in there before. Pretty creepy considering we only mentioned her first name and no other identifying info.

The high horse brigade

Biodegradable wrote: »

Incorrect, they can't get my phone number unless they ring up one of my friends and them for it. I have not made my phone number available to facebook.

They have your phone number as your FB friends or contacts on FB have already given it to them ;-)

You don't need to give them all the info, they are setup to be able to fill in the blanks. Like I said already if you weren't on Facebook they'd have a shadow profile created with lots of your info

Squall Leonhart

I think it's a little overblown how much some faceless corporation actually cares about you, Joe User's personal data. Some people have themselves convinced Facebook or others want to hack your bank accounts or some version of identity theft. Bollocks. It's trends and mass user data analysed to sell things. And what is so wrong with targeted advertising? Better see ads for stuff you might be interested in than random things.

Biodegradable

The high horse brigade wrote: »

if you weren't on Facebook they'd have a shadow profile created with lots of your info

Deliberately so? Or does some algorithm automatically do it?

The high horse brigade

Biodegradable wrote: »

Deliberately so? Or does some algorithm automatically do it?

Yes. This is how FB works

https://www.slashgear.com/facebook-shadow-profiles-the-5-things-you-need-to-know-12527207/
https://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-about-you-even-if-youre-not-on-facebook-94804
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-shadow-profiles/

Upforthematch

The high horse brigade wrote: »

I closed my Facebook account earlier in the year and before doing so downloaded a copy of all the data. It was eye opening

What surprised you the most?

The high horse brigade

Upforthematch wrote: »

What surprised you the most?

The volume of information they had. Download and see

https://m.facebook.com/help/212802592074644

Biodegradable

sugarman wrote: »

Yes. Thats how suggestions work.

So the people who come up as friend suggestion to me have been looking at my account?