fb's people you may know

[Wun]

Does anyone have any idea wtf goes into the algorithm design of Facebook's People You May Know tool (now days actually dubbed "Suggestions")? It's pretty disconcerting that it often suggests friends I end up knowing despite having no mutual friends and no overlap in network. Even people I knew with 0 friends have been suggested.

What gives? What kind of information do they have access to?

[carvedog]

deep probing retinal brain scans that come out of the A in FACE and download the contents of your brain.

[KingCrimson]

No clue on what's exactly the case, but talking about it with my Computer Sciences teacher, we've come up with a theory. Depending on what you put in your profile, including schools and occupations, in addition to comments you may leave on walls, which may include names.

There will be much experimenting with fake profiles this coming schoolyear.

[Wun]

They all perfectly make sense and I'd expect any of those to be the cause (except for the Wall comments), but, in my case, it'd be none of those. The next thing I could think of would be having fb log into my email, but I haven't ever emailed some of suggested friends (the only email I let fb login to hadn't even existed until years after the last time I've talked to some of the suggestions). And, with the amount of bullseyes, there's no freakin' way I could've established some kind of bond through email with all of them even just by contact lists, which is why Suggestions have me insanely spooked.

[ncermak]

six degrees of seperation

friend of a friend of friend type stuff...

[pow4ever]

http://home.earthlink.net/~ckadushin/Texts/Basic%20Network%20Concepts.pdf

never use FB in my life. Not sure if you can import your contact list from your email client(outlook). It could be people you email before. Or they might be mining data from gmail/yahoo if that's what you registered with.

All your privacy/contact is up for sale for the right price.

--

David

[Arclite]

No clue on what's exactly the case, but talking about it with my Computer Sciences teacher, we've come up with a theory. Depending on what you put in your profile, including schools and occupations, in addition to comments you may leave on walls, which may include names.

There will be much experimenting with fake profiles this coming schoolyear.

Sounds about right.

I always get advertisements for Marching Band, Drums, and Snowboarding or Mountain Resorts.

So I'm guessing they take your info that you give them, and they figure out what (or who) you are and figure out who was in your class or something.

[Wun]

six degrees of seperation

friend of a friend of friend type stuff...

You know, that'd fly for me if the suggestions given to me were much more massive. I'm sure that "friend of a friend of a friend" has to span hundreds of more times than what I get, so, personally, I'm still not convinced that that's all there is to it.

never use FB in my life. Not sure if you can import your contact list from your email client(outlook). It could be people you email before. Or they might be mining data from gmail/yahoo if that's what you registered with.

All your privacy/contact is up for sale for the right price.

*Scratch* *Scratch*.. did you even read my first followup? :p In any case, I don't use Outlook either.

[KingCrimson]

The fact that you get people who have no friends is what makes it extra creepy.

Maybe profile views? The only way to test this is to make a supposed friend of yourself, and do nothing but view a bunch of profiles of friends.

[Allee]

I wonder about this too. I had a friend suggested the other day that I hiked with in Peru in 2003. I haven't contacted him since then, and I'm not in contact with any of the rest of that group either. They must have data mined some very old emails to get that one...

[Seraph]

So is it possible that the person in question may have looked you up on a search, but then didn't ask you to be a friend?

[spil]

I don't know what you people did different than me, but my friend suggestions box always has people that I have never heard of and have no mutual friends with. As for those ads on the side, fb tracks what groups you join, what your interests are, etc. and displays ads that you may be interested in. Its just like how a google search has ads relevant to your search, or gmail has that little adbar on top based on what ever you are emailing about. Personally the gmail thing creeps me out a little, but I'm alright with fb getting info from you interests and groups, since you publicly post those on your page anyway. While it may seem weird, I'd rather see ads for backcountry.com than dancing aliens telling me to refinance my house.

[Guest shrederjen]

I know they tap into my yahoo email. I get many suggestions for people whom I have corresponded with reguarding condo rentals. It is a little disconcerning, but like someone else said, you are sharing information every time you post on there. Or here, for that mater!

[Wun]

So is it possible that the person in question may have looked you up on a search, but then didn't ask you to be a friend?

Hmph. Good call. That could be it, though it sounds extremely ratty that they'd keep a database of users' searches. Some of the suggestions I've gotten for some people are those of whom I wouldn't at all be surprised if they searched me. And I think I remember searching one or two of the suggestions myself in the past.

As for the ideas about profile info, groups, etc... I use pretty public settings (for a while, I actually had the profile completely public) partially so that I'd be careful and leave almost no info out there to be mined, and my email, aim, and phone are only visible to direct friends, but I guess even that can have its vulnerabilities. Only groups are BOL and TC. Anyway, I think Seraph hit the mark. Maybe I'll never know what really goes into the Suggestions, but that's good enough for me not to question it so much before I fall asleep anymore

[skategoat]

What's worse is when you get Friend suggestions for dead guys. Happened to me this summer and it creeped me out.

[Seraph]

Anyway, I think Seraph hit the mark. Maybe I'll never know what really goes into the Suggestions, but that's good enough for me not to question it so much before I fall asleep anymore

There is a way to test the theory. You could setup another account with absolutely no personal information. Then use that account to search for your current account, but then not ask to become a friend. If you find that new account as a suggested new friend at a later time, then there is your answer. I would assume that they have some sort of delay to avoid making this obvious.

[ncermak]

What's worse is when you get Friend suggestions for dead guys. Happened to me this summer and it creeped me out.

everytime I log into my yahoo mail, it asks me if I want to add Chuck "dragonfly jones" Bolden to my network...

Great memories of Chuck..RIP....

[pow4ever]

You know, that'd fly for me if the suggestions given to me were much more massive. I'm sure that "friend of a friend of a friend" has to span hundreds of more times than what I get, so, personally, I'm still not convinced that that's all there is to it.

*Scratch* *Scratch*.. did you even read my first followup? :p In any case, I don't use Outlook either.

My point is that if your friend had contact you via email b4 and they import their contact into Face book. They might figue out that you guys might know each other.

[Wun]

And my point is that my addy reg'ed with fb hadn't even existed until far after the last time I had talked to a couple of the people, part of the more general point that most of them hadn't even been given (explicitly by me, for what it's worth) said addy, used only for college purposes, in the first place.

shoop da whoop

[pow4ever]

http://blog.facebook.jp/blog.php?post=15610312130Florin is a Facebook Engineer.

"People You May Know looks at, among other things, your current friend list and their friends, your education info and your work info. If you are already friends on Facebook with some people from your last job, for example, you may find some more of your former coworkers (assuming they are visible to you in search) among the "People You May Know' suggestions."

Like most internet business. They will do data mining. It's funny/interesting/scary all the stuff Amazon suggest for me. More than half the time it's stuff that I might actul be interesting @.

The justice system have been using profiling for ages. Now they are using the technique to make money.

[Wun]

I sunk a lot of time writing this out in order to further procrastinate on my homework :lol:, but I don't expect you to read through all this crap unless you need to kill some time or something :p In the end, perhaps just agree to disagree, that's cool beans with me. I take this discussion a little seriously, but not really seriously; I don't genuinely feel the need to continue the discussion. No offense or flaming intended, if it needs to be said; I like to feel high and mighty writing in forums sometimes.

http://blog.facebook.jp/blog.php?post=15610312130Florin is a Facebook Engineer.

"People You May Know looks at, among other things, your current friend list and their friends, your education info and your work info. If you are already friends on Facebook with some people from your last job, for example, you may find some more of your former coworkers (assuming they are visible to you in search) among the "People You May Know' suggestions."

Like most internet business. They will do data mining. It's funny/interesting/scary all the stuff Amazon suggest for me. More than half the time it's stuff that I might actul be interesting @.

The justice system have been using profiling for ages. Now they are using the technique to make money.

Thanks for the link; I have already come across it, though. The "among other things" is what I'm asking about in particular, if anybody had any ideas. At this point, I can settle with the possibility of wall posts and saved search data. I'm just bull****ting around here, but still, I wonder if you're really letting my posts sink in.

-"your current friend list and their friends"

A lot of people who I have no mutual friends with are the suggestions that are tripping the uneasiness alarm. This is apparently the primary system from which the suggestions feature thrives. This base is further covered when ncermak suggested the six degrees of separation aspect, and I reasoned that the suggestions should then span hundreds (on second thought, I would guess at least a few orders of magnitude larger than that) times more people just by going out one more layer (with the suggested person being a friend of a friend of a friend).

-"your education info"

Only got one school on the info, which has nothing to do with just about all of the suggestions that make the eerie cut. And, as expected, I do get tons of people suggested from the school network.

-"from your last job"

No employment info on my profile. On top of that, never had any suggestions for people I've worked with as far as I can tell.

I block every single third-party application on fb without discrimination. I don't have mutual friends with a lot of these people, who I haven't talked to since after I got my latest phone number, since after my fb email was created, who don't overlap networks with me, who don't have any group overlap (the only ones of which I am a member of include BOL and TC, and I don't know a single person IRL that rides plates anyway), who have never worked with me, who I've never contacted on AIM. Anyway, I'll concede that it's possible some sort of info that could be traced to me was given by me or some friend of mine to a suggested person and thus pokes a hole in everything I'm ranting about, but I'm just not quite ready to completely dismiss everything given the more-than-a-few creepy hits. Maybe I'm just a paranoid mother****er, but I'll be okay with that perhaps in a few months or a few years if fb doesn't officially spill any more beans.

I get those Amazon suggestion emails too; at least, based on what I purchase and what they suggest, they aren't alarming like the fb ones are. Now, if I got suggestions for foot fetish porn when I have a foot fetish even though I don't order any porn through Amazon, (for the record, I neither order porn from Amazon nor have a foot fetish :D), I'd say that that'd be very analogous to the fb suggestions, but I don't get any seemingly shot-in-the-dark bullseyes from those Amazon emails. Perhaps you get those farfetched hits from them, but I haven't so far.

[BobD]

Turn off your wireless router at night, while you are sleeping. If your neighbors routers have good signal strength in your bedroom, you will need to invest in a tin foil night hat, or tin foil wall paper.

Just kidding. I too think that, the extent to which our connections to other people are recorded is a worrying trend. Can you imagine what the KGB, or the Gestapo would have done if that information had been available then.

BobD