Page 12 | to be horrified that people may know I've viewed their Facebook page?

icouldjusteatacroissant · 2015-10-12T13:05:47+00:00

Facebook deny it, but there's massive talk on the net that if you look at someone's page, you pop up on their suggested list or people you may know list. Maybe not straight away, but you do appear at some point Am I the only one who looks at their ex's or whoevers pages, photos, etc? I am horrified they may know I've been snooping [shock]

Marynary · 15/10/2015 12:26

I should say it was before the days when everyone had smart/phones tablets. I doubt my friend did.

TennesseeMountainPointOfView · 15/10/2015 12:29

I didn't know that facebook access your contacts on your phone. I'm even less happy about it. Anyway, this was before the days of smart phones/tablets.

It asks permission to do so when you install the app. The website also asks for access to your email address book when set up your account. In any case, this does not negate the possibility that your friend, using her DH's account, did various other searches which could conceivably have intersected with searches you have made at some time, given that you do have a relationship, and therefore likely have some interests, places or people in common.

GoofyIsACow · 15/10/2015 12:34

I can categorically tell you that it is true... I am a perfectly normal human, sitting in my living room telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Ok so, in March DH and I contacted a dog rescue which is 200 miles away from our home, in a city we had never been to, or anywhere near.

They arranged for someone to come and do a home visit, as we were over 3 hours away they contacted someone they knew a bit more local to me. This lady lives just over an hour away from me. I spoke to the foster carer who gave me the ladies name and number, over the phone, i wrote it on a post it and stuck it on my fridge. Before I had even spoken to this woman, the day after i got a lady of the same name, with no mutual friends, come up in my people you may know list. It was definitely her as she was pictured with two of the same (quite specific) breed of dogs and I then met her the week after when she came to my house.

This woman had every reason to look me up, they were checking my suitability to adopt a dog from them but there was absolutely no other way there could have been a digital link, i didn't have her number/name/email or anything else other than verbally over the phone and written on my fridge.

If it wasn't because she searched for me, why else is it? I cannot think of another possible reason.

TennesseeMountainPointOfView · 15/10/2015 12:36

goofy, did you or your DH look at the dog rescue's facebook page, or the FB pages of other dog rescues around this time?

RoganJosh · 15/10/2015 12:36

Did she have your mobile number? (It sounds like she didn't.)

GoofyIsACow · 15/10/2015 12:36

I am not bothered by the way, the internet tracks our every move when we use it. I am just trying to prove that it is true, not made up by some scaremongerer.

GoofyIsACow · 15/10/2015 12:38

Tenessee, Yes we did, however i had no other PYMK (people you may know) suggested in a similar style, just her. Not even the foster carer (however i had her mobile number so that would have been easily explained.

TennesseeMountainPointOfView · 15/10/2015 12:43

So, you searched/looked at pages for dog rescues, and there is a woman in your region who is active within the dog rescuing community, and who may have also viewed/liked/posted on pages of various dog rescues, which would indicate a possible shared interest.

There may indeed be many others, and these may or may not pop up at some point, and if they did, you'd probably dismiss them as being irrelevant because you don't know them and can't see how FB have made the link. In this case, it's not irrelevant because there is now a link, but there is a reasonable alternative suggestion for how they may have come to it.

GoofyIsACow · 15/10/2015 12:55

Ok Tenessee i can see that and I suppose that could be a reasonable explanation however i rarely get PYMK without mutual friends and this lady is over an hour away from us.
I accept what you say could be true but I really feel that is an amazing cooincidence.
The breed is lurcher so not incredibly specific (just in case my description suggested something really niche)

TennesseeMountainPointOfView · 15/10/2015 13:03

No, I agree, Goofy, it would explain a lot if Facebook did this, however it would be incredibly bad business sense for them to do so.

It would be a far worse idea than VW's emissions-test software, which is currently wiping billions off a previously trusted brand. Facebook have not been averse to stepping over the 'creepy' line in the past, and they will absolutely push to get as much data as they can, but if they were to suggest you as a friend to someone solely on the basis that you had viewed their profile, when they have repeatedly assured users that they did not, it would seriously destroy them.

Marynary · 15/10/2015 13:40

It asks permission to do so when you install the app. The website also asks for access to your email address book when set up your account. In any case, this does not negate the possibility that your friend, using her DH's account, did various other searches which could conceivably have intersected with searches you have made at some time, given that you do have a relationship, and therefore likely have some interests, places or people in common.

I don't have a facebook app on my phone even now. As I said, this happened quite a few years ago and very few (if any) people had a smart phone or tablet. My friend would have accessed facebook on her computer. She is a friend from university from about 30 years ago. We have very few friends in common and they weren't on facebook anyway. No shared interests or places in common. We don't even live in the same country and haven't done for 25 years. I think it highly unlikely that our searches interacted.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 15/10/2015 14:11

She is a friend from university from about 30 years ago
No shared interests or places in common.

So that's one shared place/interest...
Also, just because you don't have a Facebook account, doesn't mean Facebook doesn't know about you...

Marynary · 15/10/2015 14:23

ItsAllGoingToBeFine It is a shared place with my friend but facebook didn't ask me if I knew her. It asked if I knew her DH. I have nothing in common with him apart from the fact that we obviously both know my friend. He did not go to the same university and has never lived in the same country. Also although she may searched for information on the university while in his account, I certainly have never done that.

LurkingHusband · 15/10/2015 18:09

When you sign up for Facebook, it suggests you give it your email login details (e.g hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail) to "help you connect". Of course once you've given them to FB it rifles through your contacts. Those it already knows about, it just adds to your network. Those it doesn't it notes, and then spams the hell out of. I know this, because I have copies of every mail I have received, and can correlate emails from FB with when a friend signed up.

(Incidentally, people need to be beware this behaviour. There was a case a while back where a guy signed up to FB, Naively gave his email login, at which point FB spammed his ex, who had a no-contact order. She went to court, and he was found guilty of breaching it. The judge ruled ignorance of FBs behaviour was no excuse.)

Of course anyone who gives anyone/thing the login details for their email deserves all they get. Especially as it's against the T&Cs of most online services. (I am always surprised when people claim to have handed over their FB login details to their employer. If I asked an employee for their FB login, and they gave them to me, I'd sack them for being so clueless about information security)

As I said upthread, even if you aren't "on FB", it knows who you are. It knows there is a "you shaped hole" in it's knowledge. It can probably have a good stab at guessing your tastes, lifestyle, and location. Just from cross-checking your email address with the contacts it has. Don't forget this could include any companies you have done business with, and given an email address to.

I love the number of people protesting that "no one knows my email". It does rather beg the question of what they use it for.

Booyaka · 15/10/2015 18:23

Bollocks are their personal addresses linked to the Mumsnet General account. It's far more likely that it was a case of someone turning to a colleague and saying 'What do you think, do you reckon she's genuine, have a look and tell me what you think'.

noblegiraffe · 15/10/2015 18:44

Why would the colleague not simply look over the snooping Mnetter's shoulder? I can't imagine that they would all boot up their individual Facebook accounts and do their own search.

They probably logged onto Facebook using the work network.

Marynary · 15/10/2015 20:00

As I said upthread, even if you aren't "on FB", it knows who you are. It knows there is a "you shaped hole" in it's knowledge. It can probably have a good stab at guessing your tastes, lifestyle, and location. Just from cross-checking your email address with the contacts it has. Don't forget this could include any companies you have done business with, and given an email address to.

It might have a lot of information on some people I don't think it has enough on me to link me with the husband of someone I went to university with about 30 years ago considering that we live in different countries and have no shared interests. If it had enough information to do that and was that sophisticated it would have asked me if I know my DH, parents and siblings by now.

PollyGone · 15/10/2015 21:32

Why would any person plaster their information all over Facebook, and then complain about people daring to look at it

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 16/10/2015 08:13

I didn't know that facebook access your contacts on your phone. I'm even less happy about it. Anyway, this was before the days of smart phones/tablets.

You know when you just click "Accept" without reading the 12 pages of blurb.

This is why you should read the 12 pages of blurb, you've essentially given Facebook the names, emails and phone numbers of everyone in your address book. FB will link this to existing information it has from similar sources and existing FB accounts and, as Lurking says, it'll triangulate all this information.

Somewhere in the 6 degrees of separation, you'll know someone that someone else also knows (however tenuously) and one of you will get a friend suggestion that'll make you go "wow, how did that happen".

As for the dog site - you've looked at the Rescue FB Page, FB will have this linked as an interest now till the end of your days, of course it'll suggest people from the page as contacts - you only recognised the one whose details you already had, but you'll have had more suggestions of people from that page....

Booyaka · 16/10/2015 08:53

If an email from a general address made all the people who've accessed Facebook on the same network appear in your 'people I may know', then why aren't all the staff from my gym, Boots, the bank, my University, YouGov, GFK, a Digital Spy, Wowcher, Pizza Hut, my local Italian, O2, multiple job sites, Virgin Trains, multiple recruitment companies, popbitch, political party I support, etc, etc, etc on there? They're not. Just a few random people from Mumsnet. And I would never get up and walk across a room to peep over someone's shoulder when I could just google it in two seconds and look myself.

This is just like a few years back when private messages from back in the day appeared on people's walls. Facebook said they weren't private messages, but despite loads and loads of people on here saying they knew what had appeared on their wall was private there was the contingent who believe just because a company tells you something it must be true, who were prepared to ignore hundreds of thousands of people disputing it.

Marynary · 16/10/2015 09:32

This is why you should read the 12 pages of blurb, you've essentially given Facebook the names, emails and phone numbers of everyone in your address book. FB will link this to existing information it has from similar sources and existing FB accounts and, as Lurking says, it'll triangulate all this information.

I don't have a facebook app on my phone and I have only ever accessed it via website on a computer. I have no address book on my computer. Therefore, I don't see how it could access my contacts.

LurkingOne · 16/10/2015 09:43

Boyacka, we aren't saying we believe it because facebook says it's true. we are saying it because Facebook like money, 2billion of it every three months.....

As someone said above, this would be a bigger scandal than Volkswagen if it was true. The only difference is we can't sell our car as easily as we can click three buttons and leave the account.

Out of interest do you follow mumsnet on facebook? Not that it matters, as your computer has already told Facebook you use MN. That's where the connection arises. If you've ever had to report a thread for deletion, the time taken suggests to me that the MN staff aren't blessed with a lot of time, pretty sure they don't bother having multiple people "stalk" MN users to see if they are real, when they already have IP software to check you aren't a bot

Marynary · 16/10/2015 09:43

This is just like a few years back when private messages from back in the day appeared on people's walls. Facebook said they weren't private messages, but despite loads and loads of people on here saying they knew what had appeared on their wall was private there was the contingent who believe just because a company tells you something it must be true, who were prepared to ignore hundreds of thousands of people disputing it.

I agree. I also think that some people find it hard to comprehend that we haven't all given facebook access to our contacts and we don't all do searches and post information it could use to link us to other people. Some of us use facebook very rarely, don't post anything, and don't have an address book it can access. The e mail address I gave to facebook is not even the one I use for most e mails.

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 16/10/2015 09:43

Ah, so you've never sent an email from your computer then?

Seriously, cookies - all those sites that you visit leave cookies on your computer for other sites to see and tailor ads from. That's the whole point of cookies.

Send an email - cookie from Gmail etc, go on Facebook - it has a look at your cookies to tailor the ads on the sidebar, see's cookie from Gmail and hoovers up that info.

But you keep thinking that Zuckerberg is rifling through your internet history while your asleep, or that the pixies are doing it if that's what floats your boat.

There is no sinister reason for it, you gave them permission to do it somewhere down the line.....

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 16/10/2015 09:46

I agree. I also think that some people find it hard to comprehend that we haven't all given facebook access to our contacts and we don't all do searches and post information it could use to link us to other people. Some of us use facebook very rarely, don't post anything, and don't have an address book it can access. The e mail address I gave to facebook is not even the one I use for most e mails.

So it's the pixies then,

Or a massive conspiracy,

Or, from what you've posted up there, someone who isn't particularly fluent with current technology & just how integrated it all is, not understanding what is happening......

I know which one I'm betting on!