How does facebook know all this and any tips for a newbie?

[stonesandsticks]

Hi

For personal reasons, relating mainly to paranoia that someone unsavoury in my past may be able to use it to see what I'm up to) I have never before used facebook.

Not being on facebook has been making it increasingly difficult to keep up with social arrangements and kids activities (as lots of clubs etc use facebook as the main way of communicating about what's happening). So, armed with assurances from friends that I can set privacy settings to restrict who can see my posts, I have set up an account this week.

I was shocked that, despite never having used facebook before and not having included any personal information other than my name and date of birth, the first thing I was presented with when I signed up was a list of people I 'might know'. This included clients from work, people I had worked with years ago, friends from University, parents of the DC's friends, DC's school teachers etc.

Does anyone know how the hell facebook has managed to link me to these people (and is there a risk that someone I'd rather not have any contact with will be asked if they know me)? And does anyone have any tips for someone who really only wants to use this so I can see facebook pages for clubs (ie I've no interest in 'stalking' friends using facebook, I just want to get news from the DCs clubs)

Thanks

If you’ve joined groups already, it’ll pull details from that and recommend those people as friends. Especially if you have their numbers saved in your contacts and they have their numbers on their Facebook profile.

Are you using the app and have you unwittingly given access to your contacts? It matches everything up with anything it can find on your phone unless you specifically block it.

Mark Zuckerberg isn't one of the richest men in the world for nothing! It'll see what it can find links to on your phone and build a profile from there.

Doyoumind- no, not using the app, doing it the old fashioned way on a laptop. could it be adding contacts from my e-mails somehow? (although if it is, I'm still confused as some of these are people that I have not had any contact with for years)
Diana yes, I have 'followed' some clubs already so this could account for some of the local people it's recommending (none of them are people I know through the clubs but I assume it may link up friends of people who are). There are a few random people I've never heard of being suggested but it's spooky that most of it's recommendations are in fact people that I have know at some point.

Facebook has been going for a long time now and it is designed specifically to do this. It will be accessing information from anywhere it can. Anything you do online is potentially gathering useful information. It will also be looking at anyone you have friended or even looked at and building up a picture. Go into your settings and make sure it's all how you want it but part of using it is having this profile of yourself built.

Did you use a longstanding email address?It will be using your email address to make these connections, and the contacts on your email. It works both ways so if other people have your email address on the email account they used to sign up to fb then when you sign up with that email address it makes the match and hence them popping up in your suggested friends list.
It might be a faff but i suggest deleting (note - not deactivating - deleting, which fb make hard to do) your new account, setting up a new random email account but do not link this new email to any other email or phone number etc and then using that new email address to sign up to fb.

Thanks everyone- I feel like such a dinosaur!

I've put in my settings that only 'friends' can see my timeline etc- does this mean that someone I've not accepted as a friend won't be able to see anything in my profile etc (I'm worried about someone specific being linked to me via historic mutual friends and being able to see that I have children, work out where I live now etc).

Elbob That sounds like really good advice- thank you, I will do that

And don't give fb your phone number on sign up if you can use the mobile number of a free SIM card that you have.
And don't use your real name if your name is slightly usual (Not sure if fb make this really difficult but you used to be able to sign up with any name).

If you put your mobile number on your account it seems to know who you've been with if that person is on FB too. I often find if I've been in a meeting or even at my gym some of the people I was with pop up on my people you may know thing. I don't think they've all looked me up...

We had a guy in the office this week who was doing some work for us (I've never phoned or emailed him) and he's popped up in my suggested friends/people you may know.

OP with privacy concerns, the best thing is to not use it.
How have you been communicating with the clubs so far?

@womaningreen That's what I always thought but was persuaded that I could use settings to make it so that only people I have added as friends can see anything about me. I'm worrying now that this is not the case.

Until the last year or so most of the clubs were also sending e-mails or texts with updates. Now a lot of them seem to have set up facebook pages and are not sending updates any other way, so I've been relying on other members passing messages on. I don't really want to have to go in to my personal history with people who are really only acquaintances so I think they're starting to get sick of being my messenger service.

I see why that's a pain, but what I'd do is literally have a completely false ID for it and don't access it from your phone. I realise the latter might make things hard if they update last minute, but there's a lot of people with concerns re Facebook so I would hope they'd take that on board.