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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

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

348 replies

icouldjusteatacroissant · 12/10/2015 14:05

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

OP posts:

SionnachDana · 13/10/2015 13:53

doubting that must have been quite shocking. ARe you glad you know her sur name?

Garrick · 13/10/2015 13:53

How exciting, Doubting :)

Unless you did your communication entirely by handwritten snail mail and landline, bought your air tickets in person, had your mobiles switched off the whole time you were together and made no connections with each other's friends or activities - there are online records to link you up.

The Kremlin is said to have gone back to typewritten paper for sensitive documents, for this reason.

Garrick · 13/10/2015 14:02

But, Sionnach, why do you assume absolute strangers have visited your profile?

They're people who basically walk in off the street, raise an issue. I send a letter then to clarify that the issue will be looked in to - This is not 'no connection', is it? Do you not think they may have posted about this issue and the help you gave them? And, plainly, you have a common area of interest that matters enough to them that they sought you out in RL :)

I think this is actually proof that FB's algorithms work: they are people you might know!

Doubting · 13/10/2015 14:03

I am unsure how I feel! Shocked certainly.

All communication was done via the adoption agency. So through social worker. Yes snail mail!

I guess I will have had my mobile on me when we met up. Bit too random though surely? That was 3 years ago. 1 meeting. she only cropped up on the list last week.

If it was just that our phones came within a few meters of one another wouldn't I be getting a plethora of randoms suggested on friends list?

Garrick · 13/10/2015 14:06

wouldn't I be getting a plethora of randoms suggested on friends list? - Aren't you? I do! Not so much locally, as my phone hasn't got NFC and I rarely have location switched on, but I can usually trace the 'connection' on the rare occasions I'm interested.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 13/10/2015 14:07

If it was just that our phones came within a few meters of one another wouldn't I be getting a plethora of randoms suggested on friends list?

Only if you had some other links too...

Doubting · 13/10/2015 14:11

Some are a bit obscure but I can see the connections eventually yes.

itsAllGoing that's my point really. I can't see any other connection.

Happy to be told otherwise I just can't see another link (except phone proximity) and presumed it must have been her viewing my page.

etttvatre · 13/10/2015 14:21

This is some scary shit reading this...

Anyway, I've been sort of briefly cyber stalking this guy who now works for Facebook. How much do you think he'd be able to see of my online activity?

Would it be possible for him to see all my previous searches, read my private messages etc? Would he be allowed to do this?

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 13/10/2015 14:25

How do you explain all the random "Friends of Friends" whose profiles I look at who never come up in my "you might know" list??????

Weird eh? Really fucking weird!!

Or the other 40 people on Facebook with my name that I've looked up - who haven't either!!!

Fucking Algorithm, if they're going to use one it should at least be consistent!!

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 13/10/2015 14:25

Would it be possible for him to see all my previous searches, read my private messages etc? Would he be allowed to do this?

Yes, yes it would.

In fact, the algorithm has probably told him you fancy him already.....

etttvatre · 13/10/2015 14:29

*Yes, yes it would.

In fact, the algorithm has probably told him you fancy him already....*

Haha, he's gonna think I'm crazy!

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 13/10/2015 14:34

All communication was done via the adoption agency. So through social worker. Yes snail mail!

So no piece of paper in their system, or on Google Docs, Dropbox etc which they have both sets of details on?
No email sent between departments or social workers with those details on? Maybe someone forwarded it to their Gmail account for ease when on a visit?
A social worker with both your contact details on her phone?

The possibilities are endless TBH, you'd go mad trying to work out where it happened, you only need a couple of people to associate you with a number, email etc on their phone or email system & that'll link you so that anyone else who does similar is tagged as a "possible"...

tldr · 13/10/2015 14:34

doubting, fwiw, I think they've been working on this quite significantly recently.

Out the blue I'm suddenly being suggested all kinds of people with whom I have very tenuous links from absolutely years ago. (Like my acupuncturist from 2007...) And of course others that I have no idea why they might be there.

(For ages before very recently I've only ever been recommended the same few people on rotation.)

That might be why your birth mum is suddenly showing up now.

lookingforsunshine · 13/10/2015 14:34

My DH works away. I am not friends with any of his colleagues. I have never emailed them/ called them. I am sure we don't share friends. A few weeks ago, two of their names came up in my 'suggested friend list' at a time when there was some 'interesting stuff' going on in my life so I would have been spoken about a fair bit. I can't work out how they could have my details.

BeautyQueenFromMars · 13/10/2015 14:35

SionnachDana, do you have your location and gps switched off on all devices you use, including your work computer? Because if there is a device you have at some point logged into FB on at your work location, and then someone is also logged in at that general location, then FB will pick that up. So you'll send a letter to a stranger, the stranger will look up the address or even go there, FB will see you've both been in the same location and voila, a suggestion is made. You don't have to check in for FB or google to know where you are.

LurkingOne · 13/10/2015 14:36

Sionnach, you are wrong I'm afraid and Constance is quite correct.

The overriding argument is one of profit. Facebooks profits come from user numbers, if what you say is true then their numbers would collapse pretty quickly.

Before you say "ah well that's why they keep it hush hush"....

Facebook employ 11000 people. The tech sector has the largest employer turnover rate in industry.
As a result they probably change at least 2000 of those people every year, for the last 5 years and more.

Granted they won't all know everything about the company, but I'd imagine that the user suggestion interface is one of the main parts of the business and a significant number of staff will know exactly how it works.

We've had multiple books and blogs from multiple disgruntled former employees of facebook. Alleging sexism, improper use of shareholder money, harsh working environments etc.
We've also had multiple former facebook employees leave to try and start competing businesses....

And yet not a single one of them has gone public about this issue? Doesnt stack up does it

etttvatre · 13/10/2015 14:45

I had Amy Childs and Peter Andre come up as 'people you may know' the other day.

I have no interest in them what so ever and haven't even ever googled them! They must both be stalking me.

Garrick · 13/10/2015 14:47

Blimey, Lurking, I did not know that! I'd bought the veneer of loveliness wholesale.

I wondered why some of my RL friends, who joined FB at fairly high levels and constantly rave about the loveliness, seem to have been adding external strings to their bow at breakneck speed. I think you may have just explained!

Garrick · 13/10/2015 14:47

ett. You're nearly famous now ...

noblegiraffe · 13/10/2015 14:54

sionnach, you don't need to have checked in at your work place and they don't need to have checked in at your workplace for facebook to know that you were both there at the same time.

Facebook has a location services setting. You can allow access never, when facebook is open, or all the time. Your phone knows where you are at all times, and facebook can have access to that data, regardless of check-ins.

Moln · 13/10/2015 14:56

I think what Today SionnachDana is saying is that she's no like/joined many FB things, and where she works her job is to speak to drop in members of the public and then send them a old fashioned letter through the post. A short while later these people appear as suggested friends. One may assume that the person receives the letter off her, sees her surname and think "oooh I wonder if she's related to then look SionnachDana's real name up in FB

I can easily see why she might think her suggestions come from people searching her name and looking at her profile.

I know FB have kind of but not really said it doesn't happen and that they wouldn't benefit from it. But I'm not sure why they wouldn't do it either, I mean they have all other types of connections so why not use those that have looked at your profile too?

I can live with the profile snoop suggestion but the mobile phones just in the same area I'm very hmmm about. Don't like that much!!

Moln · 13/10/2015 15:07

Ok. Crossed post answering my question.

My phone is a spy, the double crossing brat!!!

Marynary · 13/10/2015 15:17

Whether or not it happens now it certainly used to happen. The DH of a friend (from university) once popped up as someone I might know. There was nothing to connect him and me apart from the fact that she had searched my name under his account (she didn't have her own at that point). He and I had always lived in different countries, hadn't been to the same school or university and had no friends in common (apart from my friend but she didn't have an account). It was quite disconcerting...

SionnachDana · 13/10/2015 15:22

lurking, I'm sorry but you're being naive. what percentage of the 11,000 employees would even have access to the algorithm, what percentage of those who had access would be even CAPABLE of understanding, or reading through it.

Yes, moln I've been quite clear all along. This is what I'm saying.

wrt comments about the phones knowing where I work, yes, and every day at five it tells me in my notifications that it will take me 27 minutes to get home. I believe that phones are smart. but 1) I go to the same coffee shop every morning (i don't check in) and the people who sit there, why don't their faces don't appear in my list?. Also, I sit and watch my son swim once a week and the parents of the other swimmers don't appear in my list. 3) also, it's the people who come to me and get a letter from me who'd appear. The next desk might be a metre away! I don't think the locations on the phones is sensitive enough to detect this.

But look, if you believe that it's wrong, that I'm wrong, that I'm confused............... I get it. I won't convince you but I know myself!

ThatsDissapointing · 13/10/2015 15:25

Marynary you will have had your friends email address in your contacts as will her DH - I bet that will be the link not that you had 'stalked' him.

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