To think "friend suggestions" on Facebook are people who may have viewed your profile?

[ashbeebb]

Apologies if this has been done to death.
Recently I've had two strange things happen.
I have been having CBT and my counsellor appeared as a friend suggestion with a magnifying glass next to her name.
Now my phone number isn't registered to my Facebook and email is different to my email.
No friends in common obviously.

Then also my ex of two years ago randomly popped up yesterday.
I've not got any mutual friends or live in same area etc.
I don't even use my Facebook much.

Aibu surely this can't be just a coincidence can it?
I know Facebook have said nobody can find out who looks at who.

Facebook own other applications, particularly WhatsApp. Probably connected you through conversations?

Yes, this is definitely the case. Recently one of my 'suggested friends' was a woman who I did a class with in 2006 (we did not get along). Since that time I have: changed my email address, changed my phone number multiple times and moved to a different country. I'm not in touch with, or Facebook friends with, anybody else from the class and we have no mutual friends. She could only have been suggested to me because she was looking at my profile.

It's locked down tight anyway so she wouldn't have been able to see anything.

I don't have conversations through WhatsApp with either of them.
All my apts with counsellor are done via a booking system with the mental health hospital.

This is why I don't have my real name on Facebook. I only use it for stalking though tbh

The facebook app accesses your location info on your phone, and reads wifi access so your councillor is easy to link without them looking up your profile or you having you phone number on your profile.

I suspect the app permissions grab your phone number even if not recorded in your profile.

Your ex may have you still in their contacts and have synced contacts with facebook so the link happens that way.

There is nothing here which says people have been specifically looking at your profile. The sinister part is Facebook's privacy invading nature and algorithms.

Definitely it does this.

My SIL (who isn't my biggest fan) came up as a suggested friend on FB. We have absolutely no connections whatsoever - geographically, friendship wise (no mutual friends), interests etc. She must have been snooping!

I think it picks data from lots of places to come up with suggested friends

• Location. Either by you being on the same wifi SSID or similar GPS location as someone. It was really obvious it did that when I was working in a different country for a week and I was getting friend suggestions located in Dubai.
• Common contacts. You have friend x as a contact, friend x has friend y, facebook thinks you might want to be friends with friend y.
• Common interests. Members of same facebook groups/pages.

You can think it, but you would be wrong.

Facebook uses lots of data and algorithms you wouldn’t even think of so it’s not always obvious where suggestions come from.

I just find it all very strange.
I didn't like the idea of my counsellor looking at my profile.
Although I search for people as well so I guess it works both ways.

If you using an app it can pull your contacts afaik. No. It's not who viewed your profile.

Look at the permissions for the app in settings. It asks for access to basically everything

I suspect the same OP.

You're right OP. It definitely does. I've had suggested friends come up as exes I knew decades ago, well before I had an email address or mobile phone number, and no geographical or any other link to them.

@SchrodingersImmigrant I don't have the app downloaded but I do log in off my phone (through google )
I wonder if that will create the same thing

For my 'stalker' I didn't have her contact details (phone number, email address etc.) and she didn't have mine; I last saw her before Facebook was even invented!

So while Facebook does scrape your address book and try to make connections, it also suggests people who've been looking at your profile.

OP Have you seen your counsellor in person? The Facebook app looks up the location of other phones with the Facebook app on, so if you've been sat in a room with her for an hour, Facebook will think you know each other, because your phones were near to each other for an extended period. Do you have a closed profile? I agree, if she's been looking you up on Facebook it's very unprofessional.

@LittlestBoho I've seen her once in person yes.
I don't have the Facebook app tho,I just log in through my phone on google.
I always log out every time.
Maybe that would still work tho?

Just set your account to private.

I've always had mine like this, Instagram too, and am always amazed that so many people don't.

I've had incredible insight over the years into the lives of a variety of people I hardly know just by scrolling through their public Facebook page on a bored evening (it's not something I do regularly though!).

I remember once feeling a nice sense of schadenfreude a few years ago when a woman I hadn't got on very well with at work popped up in suggestions and her latest post was a very long Facebook conversation detailing a disastrous blind date she'd just had!

[quote ashbeebb]@LittlestBoho I've seen her once in person yes.
I don't have the Facebook app tho,I just log in through my phone on google.
I always log out every time.
Maybe that would still work tho?
[/quote]
I think you have to clear all the cookies in your browser too to stop Facebook from tracking you. It might have been one of those cookies that 'saw' you were on the counsellor website and made the link between you. Terrifying really.

I have people come up in friends you may know that we have no obvious connection. I don’t know who they are and pretty sure they don’t know who I am so no reason to be snooping. Obviously there will be a reason Facebook has shown them to me though.

I had this... luckily my account is locked down tight so all she would have been able to see were my profile pics.
Worries me though.

Ffs no it isn't.

I don't use FB much and so just had a look and there are friend suggestions from people I don't know who don't even have mutual friends - what's that all about? Is that new? Random people!

I also had the usual ones suggestions of people with some mutual friendship which is understandable.

Categorically does happen.

If police are snooping they use special accounts so that this doesn’t happen.

I guess this will always be a divided subject.
Some people think it's possible and others don't.
I guess it doesn't really matter but it does make me curious.

@FantasySeven there's probably loads of ways Facebook matches people together
I always find it strange when it's ex's etc who live miles away and you never see