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Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won't Tell Me How (gizmodo.com)

Kashmir Hill, reporting for Gizmodo: Rebecca Porter and I were strangers, as far as I knew. Facebook, however, thought we might be connected. Her name popped up this summer on my list of "People You May Know," the social network's roster of potential new online friends for me. [...] She showed up on the list after about a month: an older woman, living in Ohio, with whom I had no Facebook friends in common. I did not recognize her, but her last name was familiar. My biological grandfather is a man I've never met, with the last name Porter, who abandoned my father when he was a baby. My father was adopted by a man whose last name was Hill, and he didn't find out about his biological father until adulthood. The Porter family lived in Ohio. Growing up half a country away, in Florida, I'd known these blood relatives were out there, but there was no reason to think I would ever meet them. A few years ago, my father eventually did meet his biological father, along with two uncles and an aunt, when they sought him out during a trip back to Ohio for his mother's funeral. None of them use Facebook. I sent the woman a Facebook message explaining the situation and asking if she was related to my biological grandfather. "Yes," she wrote back. Rebecca Porter, we discovered, is my great aunt, by marriage. She is married to my biological grandfather's brother; she met him 35 years ago, the year after I was born. Facebook knew my family tree better than I did "I didn't know about you," she told me, when we talked by phone. "I don't understand how Facebook made the connection." How Facebook had linked us remained hard to fathom. My father had met her husband in person that one time, after my grandmother's funeral. They exchanged emails, and my father had his number in his phone. But neither of them uses Facebook. Nor do the other people between me and Rebecca Porter on the family tree.

281 comments

  1. tldr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This article summary was like: "blah blah blah... Facebook might be using family trees now."

  2. Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

    I used it back during farmville days just to play farmville.

    Then one day, they required my real mobile number to log in.

    And that was it for facebook.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    1. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 2

      Interesting. I never have given it my number, but could still login last time I tried. It does nag for it though.

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
    2. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 0

      I said,

      "I used it back during farmville days just to play farmville.

      Then one day, they required my real mobile number to log in.

      And that was it for facebook."

      Interesting someone would feel the need to downmod such an innocuous comment.

      I think slashdot should start looking if some user's modding history lines up strongly with certain companies and countries.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    3. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      "Then one day, they required my real mobile number to log in."

      You can buy used prepaid simcards by the dozen for 3 bucks on ebay, useful for this, or whatsapp on tablets or for login to newspapers you want to troll.

    4. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suspect it was modded down because they thought it was bullshit. I use Facebook daily and have never given them my phone number.

    5. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and when they geolocate to your house, they tie the data together.

    6. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit, they have never required a mobile number.

    7. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by rwa2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Eh, that was OK for me. It's when the FB app asked for my address book was when I uninstalled. I'm not authorized to give them all of my family and friends' info that they've trusted me with. Sadly, I don't think most other people take that kind of thing into consideration.

      The mobile version of FB works fine. And you can even still use FB messenger in your mobile browser if you select "Request desktop site"

    8. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      >AC replyed..."I suspect it was modded down because they thought it was bullshit. I use Facebook daily and have never given them my phone number."

      I can see that. But I got a pink red screen and Facebook wouldn't let me go past it without providing a validated mobile number. This went on for several days in a row.

      Facebook does a lot of experiments with treating different users different ways to see how they behave (that's published fact- and here on slashdot too). Maybe I got caught up in one of those.

      These days, I just find Facebook generally creepy and won't use it.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    9. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      In my case it wouldn't have worked.

      I got a pink/red screen and it required a validated mobile number to get past. I tried a couple random numbers and I tried a valid google phone number. After several days, I gave up.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    10. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      AC said: "Bullshit, they have never required a mobile number."

      uh... sure you don't want to read the examples going back as far as 2010 and retract that statement?
      Facebook has required mobile numbers many times. Not of all users.

      But facebook has experimented on subsets of it's users without their consent regularly. It's a skeevy, scummy company whose founder has openly mocked people who trusted him.

      2014
      https://www.theguardian.com/te...

      Facebook says the huge psychological experiment it secretly conducted on its users should have been âoedone differentlyâ and announced a new set of guidelines for how it will approach future research studies.

      In a blogpost on Thursday, Mike Schroepfer, chief technology officer, said the company had been âoeunpreparedâ for the negative reactions it received when it published the results of an experiment in June.

      Facebook published the results of a 2012 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unbeknown to users, Facebook had tampered with the news feeds of nearly 700,000 people, showing them an abnormally low number of either positive or negative posts. The experiment aimed to determine whether the company could alter the emotional state of its users.

      http://www.mmo-champion.com/th...

      " Facebook now requires your mobile phone number

      I just went to Agar.io to pass some time and just as I tried to log in via my Facebook account I was told I wasn't allowed to log in until I fixed some things on Facebook. So off I went to Facebook and I'm told they want my mobile phone number in order to continue using my account!!

      So I click the question "Why do I need to verify my identity by providing my phone number?" and it says this:

      We want to make sure that this is really you and that youâ(TM)re connecting to Facebook with just one account.

      To verify your identity, you'll need to log into Facebook and follow the on-site instructions to add your mobile number. Your phone number will be added to your profile, but you can choose who can see it there.

      Note: Maintaining more than one account is a violation of the Facebook Terms.
      "

      https://www.facebook.com/help/...

      Why do you keep asking for phone numbers?
      Policy
      Privacy
      I don't want to give out my personal phone number - Do I have to?
      Asked about 3 years ago by Judy Short
      140 Votes  31 Followers  Seen by 7,390

      Good Question

      Follow this Question  Share

      Featured Answer
      Abbe Yoga Herfani 615 answersStar Contributor
      Phone number is needed to provide extra layer of security for your account. Also to ensure Facebook that your account is real, reducing possibility of marked as suspicious. You can always hide the phone number from others via about section.

      This all, of course optional :)
      25 comments  Share  Answered about 3 years ago
      View previous comments
      STOP ASKING THAT FUCKING PHONE NUMBER !!!!!
      Posted about a year ago by Olivier Alves

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    11. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Note: Maintaining more than one account is a violation of the Facebook Terms.

      That's all right. From the very beginning, Facebook never complied with my terms of service. I want nothing to do with them. It was not a matter of being done with them: I never used Facebook in the first place.

      I block it in my /etc/hosts file.

    12. Re:Facebook gives me the creeps, I don't use it. by Outta_the_way_peck! · · Score: 1

      For browsing, yes. However, they did make sure that uploading a photo fails every time.

  3. Yea but... by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    I'm sure they all carried cellphones into a grocery store one day. You think those advertising partners aren't sharing back the same type of demographic data with Facebook that Facebook is sharing with them? You think they don't have AI munging these databases all day long looking for esoteric connections between records? You think they care about the privacy of people who don't even use the site any more than their own users?

  4. Re:Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by MindPrison · · Score: 0

    I read the above comment like listening to one of those made up crazy radio stations in the GTA game series. You know, when they replace one kind of crazy with a much crazier solution to a crazy problem.

    KILLER TOMATOES, pogo the monkey will solve it all, magna carta! Killer beeeeees!

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
  5. Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by jandrese · · Score: 2

    Maybe Facebook sucked in a big genealogical database at some point and started using it for the recommendations? If the information is out there there is a good bet Facebook and Google are adding it to their databases.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ancestry.com is low quality (most of the data is not properly verified).

      There's a good hunk of my family tree in there, and it's over 50% bullshit entered by a well-intentioned relative who doesn't understand how to do proper genealogical research.

      Still, it would pretty much have to be an improvement over 'randomly connect two Facebook accounts' so it would not surprise me to find out Facebook has licenced the data.

    2. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or Ancestry's DNA test database.

      "Looks like you share multiple alleles with these random people, would you like to introduce drama to your family tree?"

    3. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TIL the word allele

    4. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Chadster · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Facebook keeps showing me a person I might know and the only, ONLY, place I have ever seen the name before is in my Ancestry DNA match list. Never emailed. No common friends. We don't have a common ancestor in our trees yet and are about 5th cousins. The person lives in a different country, though I have visited the city and checked into places on FB.

    5. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by mikael · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I had some weirdness with Linkedin when it started sending me adverts and articles relating to living with someone with terminal cancer. Turns out one of my parents cats had colon cancer and they didn't want to tell me. So I would guess that the algorithms use a kind of diffusion process. Every person has their own unique ID number, then all bits of information about them get linked to that ID number. Each person also had links to other people. Then deductive logic can be applied. If someone is a skydiver, then all those links can be updated to have "knows someone who is a skydiver". Maybe this gets weighted by the number of people they know or how many links it takes.

      Other time, I looked up something like "protecting property from grizzly bears" while renting an apartment downtown. Then I started receiving catalogs for bear traps, camo gear and hunting rifles.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    6. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Recently, the linkedin site said facebook had viewed my profile, so I do suspect facebook is crawling sources like linkedin to build the PYMK list. The people who showed up in my facebook PYMK were not at all connected to the people I am associated with on facebook, but they were 1st connects on linkedin.

    7. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by aaronb1138 · · Score: 1

      Facial recognition. Facebook has proven it has excellent facial recognition, and in my own testing, will even recognize people in scanned / old photos from long before FB existed.

      Given that people a) gravitate towards similar looking people (dating, marriage, friendships) and b) are related to people who look more similar to themselves -- it makes sense FB is going to recommend friends who the person might be interested in or related.

    8. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by slacktide · · Score: 5, Funny

      Good thing you didn't google for "Enriching uranium with centrifuges."

    9. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      That needs to be an app. Something that chooses a random sensitive topic and makes a few related google searches in a logical progression at a rate that makes it look like human activity.

      Bomb making, disposing of dead hookers, and presidential assassination tips would be awesome.

    10. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Ichijo · · Score: 1

      Yes, there are a lot of errors on Ancestry.com, but also a lot of useful information to jump-start your own research. If a family tree connection is not documented, you have someone to contact to ask why they made that particular connection.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    11. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Warshadow · · Score: 1

      Is this the new Clippy?

    12. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by RhettLivingston · · Score: 2

      I've often thought about this type of app - but without the sensitive topic thought.

      There are many things that the search engines and sites using trackers find out about us that are just annoying violations of privacy - like who we are related to or know. Other examples are products that we are interested in, shows that we like, churches and other organizations we attend, what times we are usually awake and surfing the web, where we've traveled to, etc.

      It would be interesting to explore whether an app or extension could be created that enhances privacy by obfuscating all of that information - employing a smart bot to use both the web and apps in semi-random fashion.

      I say "semi-random" because I think it would be more difficult to discern truth if the things it was looking up, places it was pretending to go, etc. were reasonable for someone living in my area and fitting into society in at least a similar fashion. It would also need to do these things in a fashion that looks like a human. i.e. people don't visit a hundred sites at once, they read along the way. The timing needs to be right at the least.

      If you could get a large takeup on an app like this, it could destroy the tracking / targeted advertising industry. Of course, that means there would be a kick back. This is an industry with a total valuation in the trillions.

    13. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by RhettLivingston · · Score: 2

      Perhaps you visited your ancestry DNA match list and even clicked on the person's name while a tracker was active from some other site and the data was either gathered directly by or sold to Facebook. I think the trackers are responsible for a lot of this.

      Or, there is always the other person. You don't know what they have done. They may have actually searched for you directly on Facebook.

      I think this latter path explains most of the harder mysteries. We rarely consider what the other person has revealed. I know that many of the people I see suggested to me on LinkedIn have either been searching for me, have me in their address book, or have in some fashion mentioned me somewhere. The leak didn't come from my data or habits, it came from theirs.

    14. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd pay good money to watch that show.

    15. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by budsetr · · Score: 1

      Look up the Mormons people. All that genealogical data is for them and their crazy bullshit. (Note: they are totally bat-shit crazy about genealogy) It helps the crazies and their conspiracy theories because they own all these popular corporations, such as Coca-Cola (may be wrong on that but hey, conspiracies).

    16. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I find that the motivation of many of these genealogical site users is to find links to someone famous. When the goal is clear, finding circumstantial evidence to get there is easy.

      There is a minor aristocrat in the 1400's with a surname similar to mine (sort of a French version of my surname), who married the Duke of York's sister. He's not super famous, but well known enough to have a two paragraph Wikipedia article. All of the family trees on ancestry.com end up back at him, but if you study them closely, there are inconsistencies, such as women giving birth in their 60s, or as 3 year old toddlers. As he lived in a different part of England than the last verifiable location of my ancestors, there is also always a leap where the family relocates for unspecified reasons. For those trees where I've managed to trace any information at all, I can often find evidence of the same person being back in the original location. They don't seem to understand that in the 1600's, people didn't just jump in their cars and take the M1-M25-M4 route to get from York to Gloucestershire and back, and a different person with the same name is a far more likely possibility.

    17. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah that would be my guess. Or something like 23 and me. Ever use it? If so did she? If so blame the Mormons.

    18. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The crazy thing is that there is enough value to FB to spend money on licensing data about people you might be connected to. I get it, it seems particularly americans, and particularly american christian cultists, but the fascination with ancestry baffles me. Why do I want to contact a cousin 5 times removed who I never met or anyone in between? Who cares unless I need a transplant or something. But regardless, some people care I get it. I'm just shocked that there are enough people that care that offering the friend suggestion to them (who I'd probably just ignore especially since what 3% of that remotely related people will have a name I recognize) is worth whatever cost they pay to the ancestory services. Admittedly the costs are probably low and maybe gotten cheaply in exchange for a discount of unsold ad space or something but still.

    19. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, that's why they say you should use their enhanced service that makes correlations using your DNA.

      Ah, who could abuse your genetic fingerprint? It's, oh, such a harmless thing.

      Just in the way that Facebook is harmless.

      Tell me another one.

    20. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, facebook is using them and/or one of the LDS/Mormon genealogy databases. Other legal databases with listings of "associates" may also be included.

      We had something similar happen to us, linking estranged family members to us on Facebook.

      That part of our extended family is involved in organized crime, and we've moved several times to avoid them, and their active stalking/victimizing of us, at dangerous levels, involving law enforcement officials. So when they showed up on our profiles (and presumably, theirs), it was highly disturbing.

      We have actually changed our names -- which made it extra surprising -- but have peripheral dealings with family members who have not changed theirs AND who were involved in genealogy at the time.

    21. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That needs to be an app. Something that chooses a random sensitive topic and makes a few related google searches in a logical progression at a rate that makes it look like human activity.

      Bomb making, disposing of dead hookers, and presidential assassination tips would be awesome.

      https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/

    22. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      already exists:
      * https://www.wired.com/2017/03/wanna-protect-online-privacy-open-tab-make-noise/
      * https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp3ex7/obfuscate-yourself-nissenbaum-brunton
      * https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bmvv9w/ruin-your-google-search-history-with-one-click-using-this-website
      * etc. google "create fake data trail"

    23. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by RhettLivingston · · Score: 1

      This is sort of what I'm thinking about but falls short in a critical fashion. "Noise" isn't good enough because someone will figure out how to filter it. There is already technology that can put go through a user's searches and pull out those that are part of a "session", i.e. they are a group of searches exploring a path through a topic area of some sort.

      I think the system needs to fake one or more plausible users with interests and timing consistent with the fact they are a person, their location, and culture. Otherwise, filters could be developed to separate out the plausible from the random. I'm most concerned with stopping the personality and interest profiling, not the identification of illegal activities. The majority of folks with privacy concerns aren't committing illegal activities that they need to hide.

    24. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ancestry.com was founded by two Mormons and was originally based on Latter-Day Saints genealogy information. I would assume most of what gets put in there gets linked back to the LDS genealogy databases. I suspect that is where this data came from.

    25. Re:Maybe they used Ancestry.com? by wad4ever · · Score: 1

      (Little plug for Ancestry.com, since I work there: The company doesn't really do genealogical research, it's mainly a place for people to do theirs. Based on work others have done, it can give "hints" for managing your own trees. If your hints have incorrect information, it's really not their fault... kind of like complaining that "Slashdot is low quality, because they don't verify the accuracy of the comments people post.")

      --
      --- wad
  6. Face rec? by the_skywise · · Score: 1

    Possibly Facebook's algorithm "mis" identified the friend as a face in one of her pictures (and because of genetics they would look biologically similar).

    I'm more intrigued about how the one night stand got identified.

    1. Re: Face rec? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah linked in just recommended a connection with a girl I went out with twice in college 17 years ago. As far as I'm aware we have no mutual friends, aren't in the same field, and have had no contact since then.

      Obviously I sent the request for a meet up !

    2. Re:Face rec? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I'm more intrigued about how the one night stand got identified.

      The key to that is the little line: exchanged email addresses. How much you want to bet that at least 1 of those was a gmail address? I can't prove it yet, but experience indicates that FB and G share data.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    3. Re: Face rec? by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      So you attended the same college at the same time? Surely that would be an easy connection to make?

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    4. Re: Face rec? by Kierthos · · Score: 1

      At the University I went to, there were roughly 30,000 students at the main campus. I may have actually interacted with a couple hundred, tops. And that's over eight years (two degrees).

      --
      Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
    5. Re: Face rec? by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 1

      She probably googled you.

  7. Random Chance? by Strider- · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In all seriousness... Given the billion plus people on Facebook, and the many multiples of that potential contacts it shows, it's entirely possible that this is just a coincidence. I would wager it's a lot like the birthday paradox, that is, to have a 50% chance of two people in a group to share a birth date, you only need 21 people in the group. Between that, and degrees of separation and so forth, it's entirely possible for some weird distant link through many unconnected people to wind up linking you back to someone you know.

    I've noticed connections between people I know from opposite ends of the continent, that to my knowledge would have no people in common, yet they have one connector, or two, or whatever. Basically she could have been your brother's friend's uncles's boss's neighbour's gardener, and if she was showed as a potential link, you'd have no idea about the connection.

    --
    ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    1. Re:Random Chance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um... isn't that the point? As in, how did FB make that connection that goes through your brother's friend's uncle's boss's neighbor's gardener?

    2. Re:Random Chance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facebook is uncanny. I do not have an account and never have. One day I created a fake account using a disposable email and phone number just so I could look at a post my friend had made. I did not add a single friend or make any posts. All they could have possibly know was my IP address. As soon as I logged in with my new account, the person it suggested I knew was a contractor who had done a lot of work for me and then moved to another state. WHAT. THE. FUCK. Facebook did not "randomly" choose some guy 2,000 miles away to suggest to me and just happen to pick a dude I knew.

    3. Re:Random Chance? by Strider- · · Score: 2

      How it made it is likely simple graph theory on the web of connections leading out from you. I don't know if you've played with the oracle of Bacon, but you can plug in two random actors, and see how many degrees of separation there are. I've had a hard time getting that above 3, even picking a long dead actor and one new in the industry. That said, the entertainment world is pretty small, but we're a lot more tightly connected than most people think.

      Now as to why it showed that connection is a different matter. Maybe they had some sort of algorithm that figured out a slightly higher probability of connection, maybe it was just pure chance.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    4. Re:Random Chance? by Kierthos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I got on Facebook because, one day, in the mail, I received someone else's W4 form. I figured, "Hey, they may want this.", so I asked around. The apartment building manager was no help (I don't mean this in a negative way, though... she genuinely did not have a followup address for this person.), but I figured, what the hell, I'll check Facebook.

      Only I didn't have an account. And you couldn't search Facebook (at the time, it may have changed) unless you had an account. So, I created one, with the intent of deleting it shortly afterwards.

      Only, no luck on the search. Oh well. As a last shot, I went to a business around the corner, where I knew the owner. I asked (not expecting a positive answer), if she knew the person. She did. Shocking. Anyway, I passed on the W4, and went back to delete my (at this point) 20 minute old Facebook account.

      I already had a dozen friend requests from friends and relatives. In 20 minutes. The hell?

      But yeah, Facebook is creepy efficient about that sort of thing.

      --
      Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
    5. Re:Random Chance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One thing you should be aware of is that Facebook (and many other sites) ask you to upload your address books.

      Once a few people in a personal network have done that, the connections will become apparent very quickly, even if the people in question are not (yet) on Facebook.

    6. Re: Random Chance? by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      I have never installed Facebook on a phone. I use a completely non-standard email client (Sylpheed, which is actually very standards compliant, but not address-book compliant)

    7. Re:Random Chance? by hey! · · Score: 1

      Or it could simply be data mining. These people could all be unequivocally connected by a vital records search. The cost wouldn't be prohibitive for a company Facebook's size.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    8. Re: Random Chance? by Strider- · · Score: 1

      Can you say the same thing about all your friends and family?

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    9. Re:Random Chance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bone up on your math, the odds are not even remotely like the birthday paradox.

    10. Re:Random Chance? by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      And it's entirely likely that nobody at Facebook has more than a theoretical slight idea as to how their data mining connected the dots. One thing that comes from big data strategy is that you no longer ask why. At least not at first. You only find the connections and make use of them.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  8. Census Records by Thelasko · · Score: 4, Insightful
    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    1. Re:Census Records by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Sure. But if you're implying that Facebook is automatically digging into census records (or any other public records) then the question burning in my mind is why the hell is Facebook digging into public records in the first place???

    2. Re:Census Records by redmid17 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They are public records? It's data to consume. Is that a serious question?

      I don't mean that in a playful rhetorical way. I mean that in a serious way.

    3. Re:Census Records by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      "Why not?"

      -- Zuckerberg

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:Census Records by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Yes, it's a serious question. Regardless of Facebooks record of intentionally snooping, regardless of it being well-known that Facebook regards it's users as a 'product' to be exploited, why is it going to the extra step of essentially doing background checks on it's users to make connections to people that don't even use Facebook? To be as creepy as possible? To invade the privacy of people who don't use and don't want to use Facebook? Facebook is CANCER and needs to be EXCISED, plain and simple. They've crossed enough lines already, this is just one line too many, I think. I do not use Facebook because it was clear it does not give a shit about my desire for privacy and now they're going to reach out into the real world and invade my privacy on purpose? Hell, no, fuck them sideways with a rusty chainsaw. Enough is enough.

    5. Re:Census Records by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2

      why the hell is Facebook digging into public records in the first place???

      To be able to suggest exactly the sort of Facebook friending that they did. Establishing and indexing these sorts of relationships for advertisers is how they make money, you know.

    6. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's because FB thinks that EVERYONE should use FB. They said many moons ago that they were building histories on people that weren't using their service "just in case" those people decided to change their minds in the future.

      I wish there were a good way to go about requesting that data from FB...as not being a customer/product, I'm curious as to what they've compiled on me.

    7. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because it is available and they clearly believe that there is an opportunity to monetize it by combining it with other data sources.

      The only surprise would be if Goog isn't also doing this.

    8. Re:Census Records by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Because they're....public?

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    9. Re:Census Records by guruevi · · Score: 2

      Because it has value. Public record data is free. Facebook, unlike what most people think, doesn't actually provide a social networking platform, it is a data aggregation and ad delivery platform. And targeted ads are much more lucrative than non-targeted ads, first of all, it gives you more space to publish ads and second because advertisers pay for it.

      This sort of matching behavior is just a coincidence, it matches you, because if you do connect to family and friends, your network becomes more valuable.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    10. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a really stupid question

    11. Re:Census Records by geekmux · · Score: 1

      Sure. But if you're implying that Facebook is automatically digging into census records (or any other public records) then the question burning in my mind is why the hell is Facebook digging into public records in the first place???

      Perhaps the more relevant question is why the hell you're even asking that question. Do you still not understand exactly what Facebook creates value from?

      If you were a woodworker by trade, and someone offered you a football field of premium hardwood that's already chopped and ready for you to create products to sell, you're telling me you would sit back and question why you would not or should not take it?

      Exactly.

    12. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But does anyone actually make any money off of this? As in, are companies profiting selling products and services to consumers that they would not have without all this data aggregation?

      I really doubt it. I've long assumed that Google and Facebook are scamming their advertising customers just as much as spammers are.

    13. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facebook compiling data on non-users is old news. What you may have missed is that both people are Facebook users, and Facebook said one may know the other, who turned out not to be a total stranger after all.

    14. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd wonder what the catch was.

    15. Re:Census Records by redmid17 · · Score: 1

      Then you just have no idea how or why facebook, the platform and the company, work.

      Don't dwell on it. You're clearly heading into lunatic rant territory, even if your base presence isn't wrong (it's definitely not right).

    16. Re:Census Records by WillgasM · · Score: 1

      Umm...that's their business model? They collect info on people. Combing public records would be one of the less shady ways they collect data. It's not that you don't have an account with them, you don't have an account with them YET. If'n you do sign up, they'll be ready to connect to all your friends and feed you targeted ads. That's what they do.

    17. Re:Census Records by WillgasM · · Score: 1

      Good advertising works way better than actually delivering a desired product. Just look at politics if you don't believe me.

    18. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup, I was thinking census data combined with GIS and deed information in some areas, along with credit history which accounts for everywhere you've lived. If they have one connecting piece of information, like the same phone number or address for a time, it sticks with you and they can make the easy connection that way.

    19. Re:Census Records by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      because for every individual that finds it creepy and annoying there are a thousand that think it is awesome they are reconnecting with family they didn't know they had.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    20. Re:Census Records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The records are public, but they're in image format. Ancestry and other sites have to transcribe those images into useful data before they're useful. The Mormons (familysearch.org) crowdsourced their own transcription of the images back when they first came out.

  9. Horrible by JohnFen · · Score: 0

    Facebook is just horrible.

    1. Re:Horrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah, what kind of monster goes around bringing long lost relatives together like that? Truly awful.

    2. Re: Horrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      In one way it is, but in another Facebook just actually connected two real life people in a possibly meaningful way. This is one of the BEST things I've seen of creepy Facebook, no ?

    3. Re: Horrible by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Often long lost relatives want to remain that way for good reason. It is not for facebook to make the decision of who knows about who. If facebook were a person devulging such information, it may very well be considered a serious breach of trust on one side or the other.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    4. Re: Horrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Often long lost relatives want to remain that way for good reason.

      What could possibly go wrong? This, for example: Mother charged with murdering daughter

    5. Re:Horrible by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      That's not the horrible part. What makes them horrible is that they do this with people who have not given consent.

    6. Re: Horrible by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      That something good came of it doesn't actually make their practices acceptable, though.

  10. Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd bet money at least one of the people involved hasn't bothered to actually lock down their phone. A preinstalled FB app compared phone numbers and email addresses and put it all together....something like that, I'd wager.

    This is why the defaults should ALWAYS be set to "Do not track" and companies that don't honor that should be sued to the ground.

    1. Re:Default Settings by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      And people should get that Facebook app off their phones.

    2. Re:Default Settings by Ann+O'Nymous-Coward · · Score: 1

      I would LOVE TO but I CAN'T! The BEST I can do to the waste of my storage that some utter prick pre-installed on my phone, is to disable it and stop it from updating itself!

    3. Re:Default Settings by gfxguy · · Score: 1

      Yes... what's up with that? How much does facebook pay my phone company to not let me remove it?

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    4. Re:Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Root the phone, delete the app.

    5. Re:Default Settings by Misch · · Score: 4, Interesting
      --

      --You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
    6. Re:Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And then lose the ability to do any kind of banking or even watching legal streaming video. Nice choice there.

    7. Re:Default Settings by eneville · · Score: 1

      New firmware first, propper clean slate.

    8. Re:Default Settings by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      I wonder how easy it would be to poison facebook's data by entering random numbers into a few phones and letting it ingest this data...

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    9. Re:Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a goddamned phone. If you want to do computer shit, use a computer. If you want the convenience of using your phone as a computer, you should be willing/able to protect it as such. If you're unable/unwilling to learn what that takes, then it's your convenience that's killing your privacy.

    10. Re:Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      IP addresses. I've been seeing people show up in my "people you may know" if they are using the same wireless nodes, even if we don't share friends on FB.

    11. Re:Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That won't work. So it gets a few false positives. Facebook already knows their data is not 100% accurate because their data sources are not rigorously verified to begin with. So adding a little bit more noise won't make any difference.

    12. Re:Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This guy has nothing better to do then harass a small indie company. Damn you gizmodo!

    13. Re:Default Settings by Kjella · · Score: 1

      The author of the Gizmodo article also wrote articles on a psychiatrist whose patients were appearing as "people you may know", speculating that the doctor had the phone number for the patients.

      Well that one doesn't take much speculation, Facebook by default wants access to your contact list and address book. And since most people let it do that your phone number and email address is bound to be recorded from one side or the other.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    14. Re: Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I saw a psych once and Facebook linked us by mobile number. Saw her whole life on there as she hadn't set privacy.

    15. Re: Default Settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Buy a phone from someone else, then. My iPhone certainly didn't come with a Facebook app, much less one that I couldn't delete.

      Your problem isn't Facebook. Your problem is an abusive phone vendor.

  11. It's actually simple by sentiblue · · Score: 3, Informative

    FB makes connection when people get on FB using the same network connection or from the same vicinity, especially after multiple times...

    FB recommended me a few people who are completely strangers but after seeing their face carefully, I realized I've seen them at a local bar few times.

    1. Re:It's actually simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yup, and this goes to show why there is absolutely no reason to give Facebook access to your geolocation. Block it and don't be foolish.

      Don't post pictures when you're away from home anyway - it can wait. Nothing like telling the wrong folks when they can rob your house. Don't think you aren't acquainted with some of "the wrong folks" either. Either friends of friends or friends of family, you never know these days who has a drug or gambling problem and what they'll do to pay for their habit.

    2. Re:It's actually simple by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      If you're connecting to wifi from a location with public wifi, chances are facebook has already correlated the ip address with other users using the same wifi but with geolocation turned on. You'd need to stick to your cellular network, or force all trafffic through a vpn.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    3. Re:It's actually simple by xvan · · Score: 1

      Unless you VPN all your traffic, blocking your geolocation won't achieve much.

    4. Re:It's actually simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Graph theory: it's not rocket science.

  12. Not new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I had at one time many years ago a facebook profile. Its long abandoned now. One of my friend's friend is routinely getting the person you may know schtick for my abandoned account. Neither of us have each others phone numbers/email in our phones, and I have never even logged into facebook from a phone. I met the friend after I had abandoned facebook, and I got my current phone number after I abandoned facebook. We've yet to figure out how it knows we know each other.

  13. DNA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Maybe they're buying DNA info from places like 23andme.com

    1. Re:DNA by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      First tinfoil-hat thought that popped into my head was they were analyzing the fingerprints used to log into the phone and can spot family resemblances...

      Honestly though, I bet it was some weird coincidence. Statistical noise that looks like a bizarre coincidence.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    2. Re:DNA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You may know (in the biblical sense) ...

    3. Re:DNA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      23andme is associated with Google, not FB...I'd be surprised if FB could get their hands on that data directly. That being said, IIRC FB has agreements with Ancestry.com and I *know* that there's information flowing between Ancestry and 23&me.

    4. Re:DNA by infolation · · Score: 1
      Statistically, it seems similar to the maths of the birthday problem.

      What is the probability that in a room filled with 23 people at least two of them have the same birthday?

      (It's 50.7%)

      With a population as large as Facebook's userbase all receiving recommendations about people they may be connected with, the odds that someone will be connected to someone else are higher than intuition would suggest.

      The algorithmic quirk that associated Kashmir Hill and Rebecca Porter doesn't need family tree secret analysis by Facebook. Hill did the analysis based on a familiar sounding surname.

      In a large enough sample, enough people looking for 'long lost friends/relatives/schoolmates' etc will make that association for it to seem as though Facebook knows more about the associations than they really do.

  14. Because that's not (only) Facebook by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    You know, whatever page you load that has, for instance, a small embedded iframe that connects you to Facebook... So maybe they won't tell you how, because you don't have the necessary technical skills to get it?

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  15. My guess by Headw1nd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Plot twist: FaceBook can't tell her, because they don't know. They've long ago given control of this functionality to machine learning algorithms and primitive AI and they have no idea what it's doing either.

    1. Re:My guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This and/or random coincidence is probably the real explanation

    2. Re:My guess by radicimo · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      i can i i everything else . . .
      facebook have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
      you i everything else . . .

      --
      100 REM PISS OFF CODE FASCISTS 200 GOTO 100
    3. Re:My guess by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Finding out how a complex program came to a certain conclusion sounds awfully like debugging, and we all know where that is heading if you can avoid it... ;)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:My guess by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Plot twist: FaceBook can't tell her, because they don't know. They've long ago given control of this functionality to machine learning algorithms and primitive AI and they have no idea what it's doing either.

      Yes. Very likely this. Or it could be blind luck and nothing more. Facebook is estimated to have over 2 billion users. They periodically suggest I may wish to know people who aren't related to me in any way, they just happen to know somebody I know. It could just be that maybe the author and this aunt both like, say, the same TV show and follow it on Facebook and that led to a connection that was pure luck and had nothing really to do with a family relationship.

      I wish Facebook could find my relatives as I've got cousins on one side of the family that I've lost touch with. I found 2 of them by spending some time searching. Facebook didn't find them at all. And to show you how "nice" that side of my family is, both rejected my friend request on Facebook. The author probably doesn't know how incredibly lucky they were to get a message through to the aunt. If you aren't friends with someone on Facebook and send them a message, by default you go to a spam part of Facebook messages that doesn't open by default and the vast majority of users never look at because they don't know it exists. I've also found cousins on the other side of my family who did accept my friend request and in no way did Facebook help us to find each other. It actually took the blind luck of a cousin I am in touch with finding an entry on Find A Grave that another cousin none of us knew how to contact had placed there for a common relative. The Find A Grave listing had an email address that we used to ultimately get back in touch with 6 family members we'd all lost track of. So yeah, I am not convinced that Facebook really knows the author's family connection as much as they just suggested a connection for another reason and it was just pure lack that there was a family connection.

    5. Re:My guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they use an AI to do the debugging. At which point it gives the answer "I know what's happening here, but it would take you approximately 31.337 years to understand."

    6. Re:My guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suspect they bought access to an ancestory db or genetics one. But excluding that I think it is confirmation bias. It is in FB best interests to create as many direct or close connections as possible across the graph of people. So they could just through in random suggestions that would greatly decrease the average distance you are from anyone. The cost of suggesting a random person is nearly zero especially they say suggest 3 people and 2 of them are known 2nd order connections or whatever. If you aren't interested you'll just write it of as "I'm not smart enough to figure out why they showed up" or whatever. But if you accept you've all of a sudden became a node that pulls in another sub tree so much closer together. More people closely connected on FB means they'll likely spend more time on FB and likely not leave. They'll also likely join more common groups chat etc all stuff that will provide more info the the ad machine and increase your cpm.

    7. Re:My guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Regardless of how the ANN or system of ANNs work, the ingest data can be identified. That should be enough to answer the OP's question.

    8. Re:My guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They've changed how the stranger spam works.

      Now you get a notification that someone is requesting to contact you, all of their future communications go into that notification without further alerts. When you click it you get to see what they initially sent, and allow them to have normal communication or block them.

  16. Pretty sure I know what happened by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The e-mail addresses are the key. I signed up with FB years ago to get a free gift (music). I was careful to not give any real info about myself, but had to use my e-mail address to get the gift. Low and behold it started saying "You may know.." and listed my family members. It turned out THEY gave FB permission to read their e-mail contacts and they had my e-mail. Now FB knows all about me. FB scares me. I never use it.

    1. Re:Pretty sure I know what happened by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Sites like spamdecoy.net are useful for that - sign up with an email address on there to get your free gift, then never use the address again...
      You can also sign up for free email services like gmail, use it solely for receiving spam and then discard it.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  17. Go a head..... by MerlTurkin · · Score: 3, Funny

    Keep using Facebook you dopes! LOL!

  18. Whatsapp? by DeBaas · · Score: 1

    Number in phone... Whatsapp?

    --
    ---
    1. Re:Whatsapp? by messymerry · · Score: 1

      WhatsApp is FB... LIst of mergers and acquisitions by FB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
    2. Re:Whatsapp? by eneville · · Score: 1

      I think that's the pont the OP is making.

    3. Re:Whatsapp? by messymerry · · Score: 1

      I'm doing some work down here in Chile for some time and guess what: All the desired social networks are compeltely free (eat all you want) on this stupidly over complicated cellular system...and as we all know, nothing is free in this hyper-financialized world.

      --
      Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
  19. between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is creepy] by XXongo · · Score: 1

    I assume that this comment was intended to be somewhere between irony and trolling, in fact, I think it was probably intended to be simultaneously ironic and trolling.

    The actual philosophy of fascism is not well understood in America any more. No, a fascist system would not "shut down" Facebook for creepy behavior: in fascism, corporations are powerful, but they work for the state. In a fascist system, Facebook would be even more powerful, even more creepy, and would work for the state.

  20. degrees of separation by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've had Facebook comments that were liked by an old girlfriend, my ex-wife and my current wife of 20+ years. If at any point they are able to compare notes, I'm pretty much fucked.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:degrees of separation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I feel bad for your unstable marriage then, if this would be an issue. How very sad.

    2. Re:degrees of separation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I mean statistically those 20+ year marriages just don't last, you know? It's like beachfront property in south florida: they just don't make them like they used to.

    3. Re:degrees of separation by eneville · · Score: 1

      *sigh* - sounds like you have crossed the streams. You're fucked. If you have something to conceal you should have three different facebook accounts (yea, I know, against their terms and conditions) for the different social bubbles you keep. Or, less appealing, control the status updates so the bubbles are separated and the three would not bump into each other on your status updates.

    4. Re:degrees of separation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or better yet, stick to Reddit. FB sucks.

    5. Re:degrees of separation by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

      sigh* - sounds like you have crossed the streams. You're fucked. If you have something to conceal you should have three different facebook accounts

      Not so much that I have something to conceal, but it's just not best relationship practices to have your exes talk to your current, you know? The conversation would go something like this:

      1) He's an idiot.
      2) He's such an idiot.
      3) No shit. It's great to have independent confirmation that he's an idiot.

      I don't need that kind of tsuris. Better they should each have to confirm for themselves that I'm an idiot.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:degrees of separation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's be more like:
      1) I don't know why I married him.
      2) That's why I'm no longer married to him.
      3) Why do you think I didn't marry him?

    7. Re:degrees of separation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another reason not to use Facebook. I don't need my wife knowing about my past.

  21. Re:Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by messymerry · · Score: 0

    Very funny...the government is completely on-board with FB on tying all this disparate data together. The TLAs just love FB and Zuckerturd is more than happy to play ball. You can be sure mucho taxpayer dollarinis have made their way in FB coffers... just sayin'

    --
    Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
  22. Public records? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1

    Facebook buys up lots of public records to feed their algorthms

  23. The internet knows everything by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    That's supposed to be a feature, isn't it?

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  24. A new project for facebook? by bobstreo · · Score: 1

    DNA Analysis. Facebook and Me.

    Then they can do even deeper linking of people. Maybe you can find out who your daddy really is and collect some back child support.

    1. Re:A new project for facebook? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DoubleHelixBook presents: People you may not marry.

  25. This happened to me... when my abusers found me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Usually I hate being Anon on here, but this one is a bit to important to not mention.

    TL:DR my late step father used to pimp me out to a pedophile bicker friend of his. Happened when I was about 11 to 13. During that time I ended up having to... well be kind of shield for my younger siblings too. Fast forward until I'm about 19 and my step father dies from heart problems from the meth the aforementioned mentioned biker was selling him. No one in my immediately family was using Facebook at the time, but all of a sudden we start getting hangup calls from some number we don't know. We eventually found out one our aunts had been putting all of these family photos up on Facebook and tagged us all in them and given that she's an idiot about security.

    Now, my story ended better than it could and the police were actually able to find my abuser since he already had some warrents on him as is. But non the less, the damage had already been done to the security and piece of my entire family.

  26. FB Still Shows Me on PYMK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I deleted my FB account 6 months ago. And, I mean I *DELETED* it.. I didn't "deactivate" it.

    This week I found out that Facebook is still showing my old profile picture to people in People You May Know and encouraging them to send me an email asking me to join.

    So, I guess you can never really quit Facebook.

    1. Re:FB Still Shows Me on PYMK by tsqr · · Score: 1

      I deleted my FB account 6 months ago. And, I mean I *DELETED* it.. I didn't "deactivate" it.

      This week I found out that Facebook is still showing my old profile picture to people in People You May Know and encouraging them to send me an email asking me to join.

      So, I guess you can never really quit Facebook.

      No; you can quit Facebook. But Facebook will never, ever quit you.

    2. Re:FB Still Shows Me on PYMK by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      Like Mormons!

    3. Re:FB Still Shows Me on PYMK by tsqr · · Score: 1

      Like Mormons!

      HaHaHaHaHa!!! Exactly like Mormons! I dropped out 40 years ago, and I still get visits from the home teachers.

  27. Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

    A few years ago, my father eventually did meet his biological father, along with two uncles and an aunt, when they sought him out during a trip back to Ohio for his mother's funeral. None of them use Facebook.

    You see that little 'f' logo in the upper right of slashdot's page? That's not a simple icon graphic with a link to Facebook. It's a complex script which drops a cookie or figures out some other way to track your computer, and reports which web page you viewed that icon on. So even if you don't have a Facebook account, Facebook is still tracking you. Not as you, but as user #92183656156.

    Every time you visit a web page with that 'f' icon (most major sites), you are being tracked. And all it takes is one time when you enter an email address into a web page, and they're able to deduce that user #92183656156 that they've been tracking is in fact your_name@gmail.com, from which point they can cross-reference to deduce your phone number, home address, where you work, how much money you make, who your relatives are, etc. even though you don't have a Facebook account.

    1. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It might even be simpler - his father had Porter's number in his phone. Everyone's phone has FB preinstalled and it already has permissions to read just about everything, even if you don't use it. So FB can just connect everyone together based on who has who in their phone contacts.

      Subby has dad in his phone.
      Dad had great aunt's husband in phone.
      They don't use FB but they all have it installed and authorized to spy.
      Mystery solved. I mean subby answered his own question at the end there.

    2. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by in10se · · Score: 1, Informative

      No, that's actually just a simple icon graphic with a link to Facebook. While some people use the Facebook SDK and plugins, even with all my ad/script blockers turned off, Slashdot doesn't load any Facebook content.

      --
      Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
    3. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Balial · · Score: 1

      I'm calling shenanigans on this:

      "Everyone's phone has FB preinstalled and it already has permissions to read just about everything"

      lolwut?

    4. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot doesn't load any Facebook content.

      Look again. Facebook runs 1,222 domains just on their primary autonomous system block:
      https://www.tcpiputils.com/browse/as/32934

      And that list does not include the B2B analytics contracts Facebook has. Six of them attempt to load scripts on every slashdot page.

    5. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless you have client side scripts disable it, yes. (uBlock Origin in my case)

    6. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Shatrat · · Score: 2

      Privacy Badger from the EFF in my case. It's currently blocking 20 trackers on this page.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    7. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why

      ||facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net|~fb.com
      ||fb.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net|~fb.com
      ||fbcdn.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net|~fb.com
      ||fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net|~fb.com
      ||facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net|~fb.com|~redfin.com

      filters in ABP

    8. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      Stupid question: don't blockers like uBlock prevent this (or at least hinder it)?

      If not, what would be the tool or technique one would use to disable this?
      IS there a way to do so, and still have a usable web-browsing ability?

      --
      -Styopa
    9. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most major phone manufacturers do. Facebook runs system apps with permissions that Google would never allow (for example, com.facebook.system and com.facebook.appmanager) Luckily for facebook, they don't need Google to allow these apps because they skip Google and go directly to the phone manufacturers.

      So yes permissions to read just about everything.

    10. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by kevmeister · · Score: 1

      Odd. My Privacy Badger shows no trackers on slashdot. Of course, noscript is blocking 11 sites from running their scripts which might have pulled in many more if allowed to run.

      --
      Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
    11. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't need to. Slashdot has other beacons, and Facebook can correlate.

    12. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Privacy Badger. BTW, the "F" on this page is NOT a tracker, although there are 3 others here.

    13. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Privacy Badger is too "forgiving", and too coarse. For fine-grained control, use uMatrix+uBlock+NoScript(not for blocking JS, as it's already handled by uMatrix, but to sanitize XSS, etc) instead.

    14. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By uBlock, I meant uBlock Origin of course.

    15. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cheaper phones are now funded by pre-installed malware, much the same as Windows. If you only use top end / Nexus / brand phones you probably never see this. If you go for the cheapest Chinese brands then you are 100% sure to have been owned in this way. Doesn't mean the more expensive ones aren't owned too, but it's slightly more subtle.

    16. Re:Facebook tracks you without a Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NOT if you've been lying online for 17 years and NEVER use your real identity for anything. Everyone raise your hand if you've done this. I'm only one fucking smart enough to know this shit was going to happen. BAD on all of you!!!

  28. Connecting People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Facebook -- Connecting People. Just go with it. Surrender to the inevitable. Resistance is futile.

  29. THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2, Informative

    Plain and simple. People who are not users of Facebook should not be dragged into Facebook just because Facebook wants to. Screw them.

    1. Re:THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are both users.

  30. Sheer probability? by Harold+Halloway · · Score: 1

    I recall reading some time ago that if you select two US citizens at random, there is a 1 in 30 chance that they have a mutual friend. I'm no statistics or probability expert (as you can probably already tell) but I would be tempted to ascribe the coincidental appearance of this person's great aunt as simple probability, coupled with 'cocktail party effect' name recognition.

  31. Big Data by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

    The thing is, is that Facebook et al have access to truely massive data sets, that they can slice and dice in every conceivable way they see fit. They can use algorithms to identify correlations that an average person would never even consider making, and the results can be downright frighteningly uncanny.

    Another example is when a father found out his daughter was pregnant because of marketing material from Target (I think it was Target...). I think even the daughter wasn't entirely sure. But Target figured it out by comparing her purchases with the purchases of other expectant mothers and found correlations.

    This is the kind of power that Big Data can provide.

    It's also why I'm very nervous about Big Data, because IMO this kind of thing is *too* powerful, and is just begging to be abused by disreputable people.

  32. Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lots of companies and apps data mine your contact lists. Many people accidentally link a website (such as LinkedIn) to all their email contacts and once that happens the data gets around. So you have the two males linked by contacts. Facebook knows that and searches for profiles who also have one of those contacts.
      Then it recommends people between those two groups.

    How many other people have popped up on that list who you don't know? Just because there was a family connection this time doesn't mean Facebook actually new you guys were related. The winning lottery player must have been a genius to pick the winning numbers, right? Same thing with Facebook.

  33. Re:Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by GuB-42 · · Score: 0

    This is an interesting way to achieve a Godwin point.

  34. Good work, peasants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And this is what millenials cheer for when they say "privacy is dead", as if it's a good thing? I wonder if they realize they're actually cheering for corporate profits, none of which they have any claim to, and none of whom give the slighest damn about you. Good work, peasants!

  35. contact access within mobile app by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Alice has Bob in her contacts list on her phone
    Bob has Alice in her contacts list on his phone
    Bob has Caroline in his contacts list on his phone
    Caroline has Bob on her contacts list on her phone
    Bob doesn't use Facebook.
    Alice and Caroline do, and use the mobile phone app to do so.

    Facebook now knows that Alice and Caroline are linked through Bob, and probably have worked out how old Bob is if either of them recorded Bob's birthday. If Bob lives in North America, his cellular phone number would give away approximately where he lives. They probably also know his email address.

    and that's without the various third party cookies and tracking beacons that they drop all over the web.

  36. conspiracies in conspiracies! by number6x · · Score: 5, Informative

    You conspiracy theorists need to keep your stories straight. There were no controlled demolitions in the world trade buildings on 9/11. Sure, the conspiracy theorists keep harping on about how jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel, even though the structural engineers have proven time and time again that the steel doesn't have to melt to collapse, just be softened and weakened by the heat.

    However, remember the other big conspiracy about airplanes: Chemtrails!

    Those planes had just taken off so their fuel tanks were full of jet fuel. The Chemtrail people will inform you that this also means that their chemtrail tanks were full of chemtrail chemicals! As we all know from high school chemistry (or high school musical 3? I forget which now...), the active chemical dispersant used in the chemtrails is Benzo-dioxy-teraphylone-glycosamate and it burns at a temperature of 3,723 degrees Celsius. This is more than hot enough to melt steel.

    Of course the government can't admit that the planes were full of chemtrail chemicals because that would reveal the chemtrail conspiracy! So quit falling for the false fake conspiracy of controlled demolition, it is merely a counter intelligence psy-ops rumor designed to hide the true fake conspiracy of chemtrail chemicals!

    1. Re:conspiracies in conspiracies! by The+Snowman · · Score: 0

      Of course the government can't admit that the planes were full of chemtrail chemicals because that would reveal the chemtrail conspiracy!

      Obligatory xkcd

      --
      24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
    2. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Given you are so confident in your understanding of 9/11, what is your explanation for the collapse of building 7, and the manner in which it happened?

    3. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by Eg0r · · Score: 1

      Given you are so confident in your understanding of 9/11, what is your explanation for the collapse of building 7, and the manner in which it happened?

      Dumb luck?

      --
      "Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
    4. Re:conspiracies in conspiracies! by aod7br7932 · · Score: 2

      That chemtrail interesting, but even so, did you spread gasoline over ALL STRUCTURAL STEAM COLUMNS of at least 30 floors? Its not just the stell, you have to do it nearly everywhere to make it collapse like that, otherwise the structure below would pose HUGE resistance. Plus they detected nano-thermite composites on a lot of that dust. If you believe the official story, 911 revolutionized the controlled demolition field, you just have to blew a few floors, and you have an entire building turned into DUST, and those buildings (including wtc7) were engineering COLOSSUS, some were even DESIGNED to withstand a plane hit... please look at the evidence

    5. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by pastafazou · · Score: 1

      Fire burning all day in building 7 ultimately weakened it enough that the floors began collapsing: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

    6. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fire burning all day in building 7 ultimately weakened it enough that the floors began collapsing: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

      You cite the Daily Fail as evidence? Really?

    7. Re:conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lisa Martino-Taylor

    8. Re:conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DESIGNED to withstand a plane hit...

      please look at the evidence

      And the building withstood the impact of a large plane at high speed. Looks like a success to me. Also, there was a lot of compromise in that building to account for height and wind load. Due to the flexibility of a building that high, both ends of the steel trusses were not anchored. They alternated. Anyone in construction of anything over 2 stories also knows that steel loses 60+% of it's strength at temperatures over 600 F. Jet fuel burns quite higher than that. Once one floor gives way, it will create the pancake affect which we saw. The floor below was not designed to hold it's weight and the weight of the floor above.

      Those nano particles and molten steel in the basement were from the rescue operations. Check out the basic load for a firetruck one day. They all come with cutting torches. Heavy rescue teams have much more including thermite.

    9. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love this post so much

    10. Re:conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Plus they detected nano-thermite composites on a lot of that dust"

      Yeaaaaah... what, precisely, are "nano thermite composites?" If they are what it sounds like, am I supposed to be shocked that tiny particles of iron oxide and aluminum were found in the residue of a disaster where a tube of aluminum slammed into a structure made of steel, the resulting inferno burned for hours, then collapsed on itself?

      "911 revolutionized the controlled demolition field, you just have to blew a few floors, and you have an entire building turned into DUST,"]

      Have you ever, uh, actually seen the picture of the disaster zone after the collapses? It wasn't "an entire building turned into dust," hon, it was everything from dust to pieces of steel and concrete the size of large suburban houses. Hell, one of the very few survivors who was inside survived by riding an intact piece of stairwell the whole way down!

      And once the roughly 100000 ton upper sections of the towers broke free, what do you THINK was going to happen? That they were going to magically accelerate sideways? That any structure on earth is going to catch and stop a hundred thousand tons of building that had freefallen for even the single second necessary to go down one floor? No, they were going straight down, pulverizing themselves and everything below them to bits as they fell at freefall acceleration.

      Stop insulting the people who died that day. Please.

    11. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pure coincidence

    12. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Less Luck

      More Dumb

      As in you're dumb if you think it was luck.

    13. Re: conspiracies in conspiracies! by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Gravity.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  37. Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They exchanged emails, and my father had his number in his phone.

    Are people really this dumb? They let people import contacts. They keep the email addresses and phone numbers of their users. It's a simple graph query.

    1. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Are people really this dumb?... It's a simple graph query."

      He read, in between updating lectures for a community-college elementary algebra course, with a month devoted to learning x-y coordinates and a 30% passing rate.

    2. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by jittles · · Score: 1

      They exchanged emails, and my father had his number in his phone.

      Are people really this dumb? They let people import contacts. They keep the email addresses and phone numbers of their users. It's a simple graph query.

      But there is more than just that going on. I've had Facebook suggest that I friend a neighbor that I didn't even know the name of. I moved in next door, and talked to her on a daily basis when our dogs would run into each other on walks, but I never knew her name, and she never knew mine. We are no longer neighbors but LinkedIn now asks me if I want to add her to my network. Neither of us had a phone number for the other and it was a solid 2-3 months AFTER Facebook suggested that we be friends before she ever asked me my name.

    3. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True, but you need one more step to get there. As one example, I think it's reasonable to assume that the paternal grandfather gave his son's (the father of the article's author) contact info. She put it into her email contact list, which then by default or by her explicit directive got imported into her Facebook account. I think we can also safely assume that the author has, at some point, imported her own father's contact info into her Facebook account. One common contact between the two Facebook users (daughter and great aunt, with the former's father and the latter's son in both lists), and even Zuckerberg can make the connection without breaking a mental sweat.

    4. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've had a similar experience. When I first joined FB it kept asking me add an older woman I did not know and had no friends in common with. I never imported any contacts into FB or gave it more that the Yahoo! e-mail address I use for spammy sites. Several years later, I get an e-mail from this SAME WOMAN in my Yahoo! account. She clearly intended the e-mail to go to someone else who shared my last name. It was super creepy for me, but maybe she imported her contact list years ago and when I signed up, FB thought I must know her.

    5. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I often think about this. You go to a gathering (party, dinner, funeral, etc.) and have a geotagging device on yourself that knows where you are and who is near you at this exact moment. You don't need to exchange email, phone number or anything. If you happen to be logged on facebook or any other social network, the app knows that you were near someone. So, they can then infer many thing from this small info you gave them.

    6. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sure, but the problem is that the author and distant relative's social graphs are disconnected. The two connecting nodes are users who don't even use Facebook, so how did FB connect the two graphs?

      dom

    7. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well in your not so dumb phone there's the thing called Location Services (gps and all other info that can be use to pinpoint your whereabouts) Facebook simply tracks and matches app-users that are close to each other too... scary as hell IMHO. My GF was suggested to friend a local carpenter the other day, she spent about 10 minutes chatting with him outside the supermarket a couple of hours before that happened and she has no contact-info whatsoever of that guy stored anywhere nor has she googled him.

    8. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't even have to import contacts or even use Facebook. Whatsapp is well known for ripping all the contacts off your phone. Whatsapp was bought by Facebook.

      Even if the relative isn't using it now, at one point someone ran that app on their phone and their contact list was data mined.

    9. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your cellphones were in proximity for more than a moment, more than once. Either FB has both your cell numbers, and/or you have the FB app on your phones.

    10. Re:Sherlock Holmes couldn't figure this out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They exchanged emails, and my father had his number in his phone.

      Are people really this dumb? They let people import contacts. They keep the email addresses and phone numbers of their users. It's a simple graph query.

      According to the next sentence, neither of the people who exchanged numbers have used Facebook, and thus wouldn't have imported their contact lists onto the site - ruling that out as a possible way of identifying the connection.

  38. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by sexconker · · Score: 2

    "When someone tells you who they are, believe them." - Maya Angelou

    I am the Lindbergh baby.

  39. Wish Granted by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 2

    They have a form you can fill out here, or you can email datarequests@support.facebook.com. If you actually bother to do this, write it up and submit it to Slashdot/Hacker News. I'm sure it would be of interest.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    1. Re:Wish Granted by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 2

      Link is here. Sorry for not using preview.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  40. but haiku? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I played Farmville once
    Then they asked for my number
    Now I do not play

  41. People talk by myid · · Score: 1

    A few years ago, my father eventually did meet his biological father, along with two uncles and an aunt, when they sought him out during a trip back to Ohio for his mother's funeral. None of them use Facebook.

    I'm guessing this is what happened:

    People talk. At least one of the five people (your father, his father, and the two uncles and aunt whom your father met) must have told other people about the meeting. Then the word spread. "Hey guess what. Mr. Porter met his son, a man named Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill also met two uncles and an aunt. Mr. Hill has a son named X."

    Then someone who heard the news researched to learn more about the family tree, to understand it all. (Some people just love that kind of stuff - family trees, abandonments and meetings - they just eat that stuff up.)

    The person (P) who heard about it, and did the research, probably had a Facebook account. After they figured it all out, they probably posted it to Facebook. Facebook must have read and understood what P said about a family tree, which included someone named "X Hill" (you). If you use your real name in Facebook (X Hill), then Facebook must have linked you to the family tree that P wrote about.

    Just a guess as to what happened, but it seems reasonable to me.

  42. Facebook, LinkedIn and others by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Facebook, LinkedIn and others use some sort of analytics tool. My neighbor showed up on my LinkedIn. I did not know her name, but new her face and lo and behold there she was in "People You May Know" on LinkedIn.

    Facebook and LinkedIn build a deep graph from phone numbers, contact lists, and emails that they must have obtained from other sources. Then they do something with it (match last names, addresses, etc).

  43. It must be a magic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what ales could it be :O ? ;)

  44. https://www.requestpolicy.com/ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://www.requestpolicy.com/

    Stops external requests. Like that facebook script the parent talks about.

  45. Ancestry.com, Match.com, POF.com by Shotgun · · Score: 1

    It is obvious to me that FB pay for info from other companies. Some other have mentioned clues that would indicate that this link probably came from Ancestry.com. When I was dating last year, I would get recommendations for women that I had met and went out with from dating websites. For the most part, the recommendations were for women that I didn't actually end up dating (the vast majority of them).

    I thought that maybe the women had been checking out my background, but now I'm not so sure.

    --
    Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
    Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  46. Facebook probably buys contact lists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think third party apps harvest contact lists and Facebook buys them. I don't use a Facebook app, but somehow Facebook connects me to phone contacts regardless.

  47. Facebook Figured Out I'm Related to Hitler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does That Make Me A Nazi?

  48. A possible simple explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Facebook cross references contact lists (this I know from an experiment I ran using a fake account I created --- if you are someone's Facebook contact list, Facebook starts suggesting you might know the others on that person's contact list).
    The woman and her great aunt are both on Facebook.
    All it takes is for one common email address to show up in their contact lists and Facebook suggests they might know each other.
    So how could that happen?
    From what she said, her father and his biological father met due to a funeral a few years ago.
    Neither of those guys uses Facebook, but the great aunt is married to the paternal grandfather, so likely the paternal grandfather told his wife. "Here's my son's contact info in case you ever want to contact him to tell him, for example, that I have croaked."
    Of course the daughter has her father's contact info in her contacts.

    I don't know if it's still the case, but it used to be the default that Facebook (and also Linkedin) would import your contacts from your phone or email account. And even if that isn't the default anymore, many people think importing their contacts is a swell thing to do (because, after all, if you're on Facebook, you probably don't care about your privacy anyway). So the daughter and the great aunt end up with the paternal grandfather/husband on their Facebook contacts lists, and the rest is trivial.

    This is just one simple possibility. There are many others along the same lines.

    And now you know why I have never had nor will I ever have a Facebook account using any real info about myself (same for Linkedin, etc) and why I am an AC. If I haven't been in contact with someone in years or decades, there's good reason for it, and I go out of my way to remain as hard to contact as possible except to my real friends in the real world. Imagine that.

  49. Re:This happened to me... when my abusers found me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm being an asshole here I know, but it doesn't sound like your family had much security and piece of mind prior to anything facebook did. I would imagine this biker dude could have found your family through other means, being that he was still selling your stepfather meth and all. Unless you had tried to move or hide after your stepfather died?

  50. This could be done w/ user search data. by dmomo · · Score: 1

    She, herself may not have searched for you or anyone in your network, but people in her network may have done so. The shape and number of those connections may have revealed that bond. That's one way Facebook could divine these connections. Graph theory is neat and eerie.

  51. Re:between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cree by morethanapapercert · · Score: 1
    You mean, like now, with every social site being required to allow TLA access and people crossing the border are being required to surrender all their social media accounts(and, IIRC passwords to said sites)? Let's not forget the infamous Room 634a run by AT&T on behalf of the NSA, (and, one assumes, similar facilities at all the other backbone ISP companies) so any one site not playing footsies with the intel community gets all of its traffic harvested, stored and analysed anyway.

    Then there are the persistent rumours and stories about the hardware companies being required to put back-doors in their kit. Personally, I think back dooring export kit is a legitimate intelligence operation, but the rumours are that the vulnerabilities are going into all gear they ship.

    The result is that all the American companies the intelligence communities care about are about are wittingly or unwittingly, working for the government and there are many Americans who think that is a good thing

    --
    I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
  52. Re:between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cree by morethanapapercert · · Score: 1

    correction, room 641a

    --
    I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
  53. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anonymous cowards don't get to be satirical, if you won't even put a username or a pseudonym behind your words then you have no reason to claim irreverence or absurd glee for the sake of cultural criticism, you are adding to the conversation literally and should be taken literally.

  54. lies or stupidity! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Look at the url you idiot! It's to facebook and the ip hit with referrer and user agent and time and network timing data and so on is a datapoint.

    "Slashdot doesn't load any Facebook content." omg so much for nerds, they can't even view html.

    1. Re:lies or stupidity! by in10se · · Score: 1

      While you may be able to "view html", you certainly can't read and understand it. The Facebook icon in the top right of the header uses CSS to output an "F" (actually Unicode \e8ba) with a blue background. It then links to a Slashdot Facebook page. a-href linking to content does not provide any information to the destination domain unless you click on it.

      --
      Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
  55. 6 degrees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you both know Kevin Bacon? Mystery solved.

    1. Re:6 degrees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't safely cook bacon at 6 degrees (F or C).

  56. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by ichthus · · Score: 2

    - Maya Angelou

    Pft. Yeah, if that's even her real name.

    --
    sig: sauer
  57. I had something similar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a friend from 30 years ago that refuses to use FB, never had an account.
    Despite the fact we have lived in different continents and don't have a single common friend, FB suggested me his wife as a friend to add. So they're definitely completing their graph more more data than what people enter on their site.

  58. Re:between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cree by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

    it's like the STASI never even existed. That's what facebook would become.

  59. I'm voting integrated data with facial recognition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They have times and dates, and relationship.

    They have photos and locations where they were took, and who was in them.

    They have facial recognition.

    They are always trying to map out the human social network.

    When the great enemy tries to destroy humans, it is going to be a great and exhaustive phone book there that assures they got every last one, or to identify any ones they find that they missed. That is going to suck.

  60. 99% sure they used the phone number by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Many, many times people I have no other relationship with have shown up as recommended friends a few weeks after we've exchanged phone numbers meaning Facebook obviously imports your contacts.

    Since the father had the number perhaps he used Facebook once or perhaps he shared that phone number with another relative who used Facebook. A simple phone number matrix of friends of friends would provide the recommendation.

    Facebook probably knows more about who knows who and friends of who knows who than the CIA.

  61. Not so suspiscious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is not hard to figure out. This person looked at the public portions of your profile more than once. So even with no connection you each got suggested to be friends with each other.

  62. Statistically less interesting than a coin flip by steffin121 · · Score: 1

    In order to understand this you have to also look at how many people it "recommended" to you that you did not know. My guess is that number is extremely high. The fact that you found one interesting person in that mix of results is interesting to you. As a result your amazement is a form of hindsight bias. You think it is amazing because they connected you. In reality it is closer to luck brought by the vast number of connections available in Facebook. This hit or miss scenario is referred to as sensitivity and specificity. The number of hits that are actually connected (out of the number of total recommendations) vs the number that they did not recommend to you because they didn't think they were connected (thrown in the trash bin). To truly know how magically good the algorithm for suggested connections is you have to know both stats, and I don't know how likely it is that FB would give you that information.

  63. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Facebook comes preinstalled on nearly every phone. It then reads your phone contacts and uploads them to facebooks severs, which is likely how they made this connection.

  64. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    Great sarcasm there. I almost believed you for a minute.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  65. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by es330td · · Score: 1

    Stop using it. If you aren't paying for it, you are the product being sold. Until, and unless, users quit Facebook until Zuckerf*cker behaves different this will continue.

  66. Re:This happened to me... when my abusers found me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How does hangup calls damage the security of your family?

  67. Well actually kinda did, kinda didn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ignoring that as another 'Anonymous Coward' I can't help but feel like I'm talking to myself here all of a sudden.... :p

    First off there's an enormous if backstory in my situation that I'm just not getting into. But my original situation was discovered by authorities and it was handled, of a sort. There even was some federal involvement, although I was never put into some sort of protective custody. Had to due with the meth. But in the end my entire family did move across the nation. Pretty much everyone in my family myself included ended up going through some mental heal care. A lot of that had been resolved as it ever could be, but it caused a lot of new problems once said abused managed to track us again. And even though he ended up in jail finally it did reopen a lot of wounds.

  68. apparently you missed the memo by scatbomb · · Score: 1

    ...but facebook *does* work for the state via PRISM.

  69. Re:This happened to me... when my abusers found me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am really sorry this happened to you =(

    You're a strong person.

  70. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if you use the internet...you are the product. full stop.

  71. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by grub · · Score: 1

    At least on iOS, it has to request access to your contacts which you then have to allow.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  72. "A connection" isn't a secret by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

    All Facebook suggested is that there was a connection. it didn't say "here's one of your distant relatives". As other replies point out, there are a billion ways a connection might be drawn. That was it. If FB had suggested a family relationship it might be a bit more mysterious.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
  73. Have You Reused Passwords? by organgtool · · Score: 1

    So both you and your aunt use Facebook and you mentioned that she exchanged emails with your father. I'm assuming you've also exchanged e-mails with your father. I've heard suspicions of Facebook attempting to log in to the e-mail account you used to register with Facebook. If your Facebook and e-mail passwords were the same at the time your registered, it would be possible for Facebook to scan all of your e-mail and create a comprehensive list of all your contacts. If both you and your aunt used the same passwords for Facebook and e-mail, then Facebook could know that you've both exchanged e-mails with your father and then recommended her as a "Person You May Know". It's just a theory based on a lot of conjecture but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

    1. Re:Have You Reused Passwords? by djchristensen · · Score: 1

      I think the idea that facebook is logging into email accounts is going way too far. The legal sh*tstorm from that wouldn't be worth it. I'm guessing it's more like LinkedIn where they get access to your contacts, which you may have exlicitly or unknowingly implicitly agreed to let them do at some point. Pretty easy for them to connect the dots from there.

  74. Are people really this moronically stupid? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Facebook didn't figure anything out. They just displayed a list of friends of friends. If you have a friend, chances are that the people that friend knows are people you know too.

    Not defending Facebook here. Just stating the obvious to anybody with 1/2 a working neuron.

  75. Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just lol

  76. Give me a break by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Try this: Find a random profile on Facebook and look through it. Preferably someone out of state or in a different country. Now watch as magically a whole bunch unknown people pop up in your "do you know?" list. By looking at a profile Facebook will then send that person and their friends a "do you know?" for YOU. Then when they look at your profile you will start getting them popping up in your feed.

    Aggregate this over all the people looking at your profile and such and sort by the ones most connected to each other and now you have a list of people Facebook thinks you know.

    It's really that fucking simple.

  77. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    It does ask if you want to upload, and then you can say "NO!"

  78. Re:between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cree by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Naw, in a fascist state you would be required to register on Facebook.

  79. It's the phone contacts and facebook app by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I saw my Insurance Agent's wife as a suggestion. Because I have my insurance agent's phone number in my contacts on my phone, and the Facebook app installed, I figured it pulled his wife's profile as a suggestion as well as his.

    I recently applied for a job and the hiring manager gave me his mobile number. He soon showed up as a suggestion for someone I knew.

    it's the phone. Your father likely stored this email address into his contacts list. That would likely show up in other people's contacts and thus a connection is made.

  80. shadow profiles by nicolaiplum · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember Facebook creates shadow profiles for people they think they can track (such as via the website "like" feature) but they do not yet know the identity of, and they can work out the connections between shadow profiles.

    It is feasible that they connected:

    Facebook user1 -- shadow -- shadow -- facebook user2

    Then said "user1, do you know user2?"

    In a country with good privacy laws, such tracking would not be allowed. The USA is not such a country.

    --
    "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
    1. Re:shadow profiles by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

      Most websites allow users to interact to some extent without eventually registering and then allowing to pull in the content they've created as part of the new account.

      Sounds like the way websites should be designed.

  81. Phone numbers by gurps_npc · · Score: 1

    1) Many phone companies upload your contacts for back up services.

    2) Once uploaded, that information gets passed around. Facebook owns:

    Octazen (contact importer)
    Rel8tion (Mobile phone advertiser)
    Onavo, Osmeta, Parse, Snaptu, Spool, and Strobe (all Mobile app developers)
    Gowalla (GPS tracking company)
    Whatsapp (instant messenger for phones)

    The most likely companies are Octazen and Whatsapp. Either of them could have gotten the phone numbers into Facebook.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  82. By Neruos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As someone who as done freelance work in relation things like Facebook (NDA), I can tell you this.

    (companyA) has licensed a huge majority of cellphone data from phone(cell/hard+ activity) companies.
    (companyA) has licensed a huge majority of internet traffic data (social media, search engines, etc activity) from ISP companies.
    (companyA) has licensed a huge majority of public record (tax, criminal, etc activity) information from public record warehousing companies.

    All 3 of these can be purchased in say, the USA from the avg user for random FEEs, just search the web, mainly for individual use, not massive data sets.

    Now, there is a neat little app that can trail all this activity between the life of the log or in the industry the LoL (not making this up and you wont find much to read on it). I'm not going to go in a lot of detail, but it's out there and it's very powerful and many countries use it.

    (companyA) which I will not name, has a lot of invest on all 3 and so do other organizations.

  83. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped- f by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's really sad that the LEFT has gotten so close to becoming Nazis that what should obviously be satirical humor is suspected of being a trolling attempt.

    FTFY.

  84. Re:This happened to me... when my abusers found me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It wasn't just hang up calls, as I said in another repose. There's a fair enough of things I could put in here but it might start to driving more towards identifiable information. He was also not the only person that was charged with him and it wasn't just harassing calls. It was mearly a lucky change it lead to him.

  85. Re:This happened to me... when my abusers found me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *shrugs* I don't really know what to say to that. Sometimes I feel... well disconnected from people that had a more stable and not hellish childhood. One thing I'll really say thing... when you take that much early childhood trauma it really skews your Overton window of personal experience.

    Thanks for the kindness regardless. It is often times in short supply on the internet.

  86. Not necessarily as complex as you make it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They might have put you together the same way LinkedIn does: one of you look at the other one's profile. I've been linked with plenty of people I have nothing to do with just because I was looking for someone with a similar name. Also note that publicly available information on the web will tell you the name of almost everyone who's ever lived at the same address you have, so you can get linked with people just because they had the same address decades apart from you.

  87. People give facebook their email passwords by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When you set up facebook, it asks you for your EMAIL PASSWORD! It scans your emails for contacts you might know.
    If you install FACEBOOK MESSENGER on your smartphone, it requests access to your contacts, and of course uploads them all to facebook.

    This is what happened. They exchanged emails and then surrendered their contact lists to facebook by one of these methods. Facebook didn't figure out your family secrets. Rather, extended familiies tend to be indirectly linked by email contact lists, and extended families may or may not have secrets. When these coincide, it doesn't mean facebook is an oracle, it only looks that way.

  88. Weak network graphs by Martin+S. · · Score: 1

    Weak network graphs populated through the wisdom of the crowds.

    Inevitable.

  89. Re:This happened to me... when my abusers found me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pedophilia is sexual attraction to prepubescent children and the ages of 11 to 13 don't meet that criteria. Also, and this is important, not everybody who has sex with prepubescent children is a pedophile because the sex can be about something other than attraction such as access.

  90. The answer is much easier than folks realize . . . by Tanman · · Score: 1

    If you install the facebook app on a phone, then it gets all your contact information. Same for linkedin or any other social networking app. You do not have to have an account with facebook. The app takes the data as part of its security permissions. So if your father or your aunt, both of whom had each other as phone contacts, ever had a facebook app on their phone, then the connection is in facebook's databases.

  91. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by dryeo · · Score: 1

    One thing I love about my el cheapo Moto E (2nd gen), no facebook etc, just the basic Google apps. Sadly the last security update was last year (Dec 1st, 2016).

    --
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  92. Re:This happened to me... when my abusers found me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ok, thanks for replying.

  93. Re:between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cree by dryeo · · Score: 1

    America is quite fascist (not Nazi, who were a weird mix). You have the "left" passing healthcare acts that benefit the insurance companies rather then the people, the "left" running a candidate who, economically, was to the right of Trumps claimed position (pro-workers, the traditional left base). Massive partnerships between the government and industry, where, when the government is not allowed to do something, they just get private business to do it. Government wants censorship, well the private movie industry implements all kinds of censorship and as it is private, it is fine. Government isn't allowed to spy, well pay industry to do it. That pesky Bill of Rights only applies to government you know.

    --
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  94. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop using subsidized internet.

    I literally own my fiber to the house and then I use dark fiber loops to peer into a tier-1 exchange.

  95. Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When someone snoops on your Facebook profile (or you snoop on somebody elses) there is a chance they/you show up as "people you may know". I see this Facebook behavior with tinder girls some time.

    So your unknown relative obviously has been checking you out on beforehand. The question is, why do they pretend they havent?

  96. Re: between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cre by KGIII · · Score: 1

    The only country that has asked for my social media accounts is Canada. They are also the only one to have searched my phone. They believed I had no accounts, by the way. Curiously, I'm a citizen of both countries.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  97. Spock say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IF all what you say is true( from your point of view) the LOGIC conclusion is that Rebecca Porter lied:("I didn't know about you," she told me)
    =>She accessed your profile a lot of times.

    Best Regards,
    Spock.

  98. Re: between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cre by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you sure that they dont? How much money flowed from the security state through private equity into facebook?

  99. Re:between irony and trolling [Re:Facebook is cree by yuriklastalov · · Score: 1

    If Facebook and Google were combined it'd be game over, man.

  100. Facebook tracking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My suspicion is you, your dad, and others are using a non-Apple phone, and the connection was made using Android-mined data.

  101. Not hard dude. by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    Just who knows whom. Your friends moved, then there are all of those other connections. I get these notifications too, however they are almost always wrong. I know nothing about them. Don't let their success fool you. It's still just a guess.

  102. Re: Facebook is creepy and needs to be stopped by John+Napkintosh · · Score: 1

    If a person own such a phone, truly does not use Facebook, never created an account and has never agreed to any of their terms of service, does that make this an actionable legal offense by Facebook?

    --

    Long signatures suck.