Sorry, it's a Facebook Question...

[Rainbunny]

I just looked up my Friend Requests on FB and noticed that an old boss of mine is a suggested contact. The weird thing is that I never FB friended any of my old colleagues, so there's no connection in common and the email linked to my fb page is a different email to my old email (I got married and changed my name and made a new email account since I worked at the old company). My FB name is not my proper name, you could never search for me by name and find me iykwim. I even live in a completely different area of the country now. I'm baffled as to how my old boss has appeared as a friend suggestion? Just wondering if anyone knows how this can happen?

[wonderingsoul]

Are you still friends with any one who's friends with him? It'll show up your fb friends friends.

[Lanark2]

Facebook decided one day that I worked for a company in south Asia. I had lots of people asking me about it. It worked out I had a friend from a different company and I had said colleague, so it thought we were still colleagues even though I am three jobs later. It must be v clever as i f I listen to certain music, people I used to vaguely know who were into similar music come on 'people you might know'. With seemingly no logical connection.

[TheCrumpettyTree]

Is your place of work on your fb page? Maybe it's linked you that way.

[RaspberrySnowCone]

Have you both 'liked' something linked to the company you used to work for?

[Rainbunny]

No I'm not friends with anyone in common, that's the puzzle!

[redexpat]

Have you got friends in common? Have you ever emailed him from the other account? He doesnt need to be saved as a contact I dont think.

[Rainbunny]

No I never put anything about where I work etc.. on my FB page. I don't think I've "liked" any fb page in common with my old boss either.

[mangocoveredlamb]

Have you got his number in your phone? And do you access Facebook via your phone?
I think that's how they do it!
I have clients come up and it's the only way we are connected!

[SwedishEdith]

Phones linked?

[Rainbunny]

That must be it! Yes my phone is linked to my FB account (although I've always had my privacy settings set so that only I can see it) but yes I do connect to the FB app on my phone. My old boss of course knows my cell #. FB is pretty sneaky, I go to great lengths to keep my work and social existence very separate, I'm pretty boring and I actually like my old boss too, she's very nice. It's just annoying to know you can't ever really escape sites like FB making the sneaky connection!

[NinaSimoneful]

Well FB strongly relies on a large number of people being connected to each other so I reckon the algorithm is pretty loose. 'Hey, you have an 'e' in your name. Maybe you know these people who also have an 'e' in their names!'

[awfullyproper]

It might be through your email address. I've had suggestions of people I was in email contact with 14 years ago. I think their addresses must be in my contacts.

[MrsJamin]

I'm sure I read somewhere that your suggested friends can be people who have looked at your profile, so maybe he did that?

[Outfoxed]

Fb frequently recommends to me a woman I worked with four years ago. I never added her, or anyone from that place, or ever said on Fb that I worked there. Also I delete Fb and re create accounts a lot so have had three different accounts with different emails since then. And don't use my real name. Facebook is evil. And it knows.

[Werksallhourz]

I've just had an incident like this, and after a lot of research, I reckon it was because I had the "automatic upload" contacts setting turned on in my fb account.

I really didn't know this was possible and am rather narked about it. It meant that if I sent an email from my Gmail account, fb uploaded the email address and then found the fb profile of the person and suggested it to me.