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

[icouldjusteatacroissant]

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

My head tells me it can't be true (and I've never had a friend suggestion for 'the one who got away'!) - but that doesn't explain why I've had suggestions of people who I have freegled items with and the woman who sold us our house fifteen years ago...

I haven't read the whole thread so apologises if someone has already mentioned this but if you have a phone linked with an e-mail address (ie, an iPhone that is set up with phone number and e-mail address (you can find out by going to settings, iMessages then send and receive)) then every time you send an iMessage (or android equivalent) to another iPhone, Facebook can use their contacts as friends you may know.

yes catford. he's just married wife number 4. I was wife 1. someone said she looks like me, so I had a look. he had 200 wedding photos on there.. with his children tagged so I looked at them too, and dozens of old friends from 30 years ago. even my dh says she looks like me

Very successful snooping - even if he does find out!

Headagainstwall FB did not send a friend request from you to your MIL, it would have been a recommendation based on her email/phone contacts.

I know that I've searched for a particular person (say Joe Bloggs) but accidentally clicked on the profile for a Jane Blooogles living on the other side of the world (no friends in common), only for Jane to then keep popping up as a suggested friend... so I am suspicious!
That is someone YOU have searched for, coming up on YOUR suggested friends list.
Your name would not be coming up on their suggested friends list.
If you had had a friend request from the person you searched for in error, then you would have grounds for suspicion, but that never happens.

why thank you garrick and cat. I thought so too

I also had a look at wife no 2 and 3 as they were friends of the children. that was a total revelation. wife no 2 is a total trollope by all accounts, and it's no wonder he divorced that one. wife no 3 looks much nicer but seems to have a questionable profession.

it was the best entertainment I've had for a good while

but all slightly marred by the question of whether I will pop up on all all their people you may know lists

Posting to see if anyone knows what this is about...

If you go to your fb page, hover the cursor on a space,and right click,a box will pop up. Click on 'view page source'. You will get an incomprehensible (to me) script page.

Press ' ctrl f'. A searchbar will come up,top right. Type 'mutual_friends' Some text will highlight.

We all have a fb id number,it is about 16 digits long. You will see 16 digit numbers come up along from the highlighted 'mutual_friends' in the script.

Open your fb page,type in ''www.facebook/'' followed by one of the 16 digit numbers in the searchbar. (not the fb searchbar,your google one)

When I did this, people who were friends of friends, but no one I knew. Does anyone know if this means they've stalked me looked at my page?

LinkedIn only lets on if you have been stalking if you are logged in. If you don't have an account then you are safe to stalk.

Wallow in paranoia if you like.

Still not true though.

Surely the only point in fb is that you can stalk other people. I've never ever posted a status and have my security as tight as possible. On the other hand, if people want to post about themselves and don't have security then they are fair game for a bit of snooping.

NotOneIota

No, it means what it says, they are people with whom you share mutual friends. It therefore raises the possibility that you may know them, as you have at least one data point in common.

This isn’t magic: It’s actually closer to statistics.

I'd like to use this phrase more.

Honestly, oddlylogical, I swear. I was there and saw it. She had been registered for 10 seconds and up popped a friend request from me, not a recommendation (I've had those myself and know what they look like).

This was all while I was trying to convince her that FB wasn't a big creepy deadly website that was going to steal her credit card details and send naked photos of her to the neighbours.

I expect FB uses the sales tools available to any company that chooses to buy them and exploits the usage and searches of anyone on that IP address on its pages to its own ends. This is normal now, and there are many social networking sites that track you obsessively and your interests.

I might check out holidays on an unrelated site to MN, then lo! An advert for similar holidays appears on my MN sidebar. Or garden furniture or pants:)

Just because you haven't used your own email/phone number linked to your FB account, it doesn't mean the people you know have done the same thing.

I might check out holidays on an unrelated site to MN, then lo! An advert for similar holidays appears on my MN sidebar

That's cookies. Not Facebook.

www.mikeonads.com/2007/02/28/how-do-behavioral-networks-work/ If you're interested.

I don't know really know. I think it takes into account a whole lot of variables. So you may have looked on someone's page but you may also have other data in common with that person that's not immediately obvious, e.g. location data, similar networks (without having mutual friends in common, I.e. friends of friends), email/telephone numbers etc so that's why they pop up.

My old cleaner used to pop up all the time which I was surprised about and I assume this was because of telephone numbers (I'm not sure she knew my surname to look me up any other way).

However, as a precaution, I tend to only snoop on people I have mutual friends with, so if I do pop up the connection is obvious and I assume hope they can't tell I've snooped. Most of my exes (luckily? Or unluckily? Depends on how you look at it!) seem to fall into this category ;)

Oops, random extra 'know' there in the first sentence, sorry.

This is 100% true. I know some people don't believe it but I know it is

It's really not. Doesn't matter what you believe, FB isn't faith based.

It's not even particularly complicated. It's basically just maths.

Here you go, people: Six degrees of separation and three degrees of influence (influence is now widely thought to reach much further than three degrees.)

Example: Facebook spams me with two kinds of People I Might Know: ranting political blowhards and youngish women with children in their pictures. The blindingly obvious reasons for this are that I'm a member of several campaigning groups on FB and am a Mumsnetter. It doesn't mean either of those two types are obsessed with viewing my profile!

Imo, we should be worried about the way social media filter our pushed content so we see more & more stuff that mirrors our own thoughts. Unless you work quite hard at it, you can easily end up thinking everyone's the same as you and never getting any fresh ideas.

All the suggestions I've had have been logical. Mutual friends, location, email contact etc. It is a bit weird when someone you've argued with via your Amazon Seller Account pops up, but it's perfectly rational!

Gloria how do you know for certain it's true?

Gloria, do you work in Brighton and did you get a £90k bonus last year?

You really don't. Because it isn't.