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