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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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!

Phones linked?

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!

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!'

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.

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

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.

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.