Facebook - Tin foil hat

shifty_uk

shifty_uk

shifty_uk

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Eveytime I go on a night out and meet friends of friends or even people I knew from back in the day.....Facebook recommends every single person I meet!

How on earth does it know who I've met? Is it searches they've made for my name, is it some scary global positioning? :p

Happens too often for it to be coincidence and it's always people that have never been recommended to me before. It seems most likely they've searched for my name to have a nosey.
 
None. Ever.

Even if someone recognises me but doesn't get a chance to talk to me, I'll generally get a recommendation for them at some point that night or the next day :p

It's not a case of certain people jumping out on the recommendations panel either because I look at it all the time and have a nosey.
 
facebook is designed to work out who your friends of friends are, the more you connect with people the more accurate it'll get.
 
When I opened my account about a year ago it recommended one of my old work colleagues. I have no idea how it knew I knew this person since none of his friends were on my friends list and I hadn't put anything down about that workplace.

Still freaks me out.
 
Lysander said:
When I opened my account about a year ago it recommended one of my old work colleagues. I have no idea how it knew I knew this person since none of his friends were on my friends list and I hadn't put anything down about that workplace.

Still freaks me out.
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That happens to me. I get recommendations from uni mates I have no friends in common with, nor any email association whatsoever. It's weird.
 
shifty_uk said:
That happens to me. I get recommendations from uni mates I have no friends in common with, nor any email association whatsoever. It's weird.
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But you probably have friends that are friends with their friends. Degrees of separation and all that.
 
Lysander said:
When I opened my account about a year ago it recommended one of my old work colleagues. I have no idea how it knew I knew this person since none of his friends were on my friends list and I hadn't put anything down about that workplace.

Still freaks me out.
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Did you ever send them an email from the email account you signed up with or vice versa? The code to create the links is probably rather complex but the basic idea is as RDM says.
 
Facebook recommended the useless letting agent who showed us round our flat before we moved in. She popped up on my recommendations about 1.5yrs after we moved in. That really freaked us out!
 
It knows everything about you, you are not alone, it knows where you are and when you are. It knows nothing but it knows everything.

It will probably recommend you the RNLI or Royal Navy once you become stranded just outside of Portsmouth because your Kayak subsided or something like that.

I have no idea what I'm talking about.
 
Recommended the woman who used to live in our house to me, which was handy, as I managed to politely ask her to tell all of her creditors and other people that have been chasing her that she no longer lives here. Granted she told me to do one but even so she was made aware and I also now have a "written" statement from her that she couldn't care less that I can show the next pair of bailiffs that come round looking for her. Maybe then they might believe my other half isn't her.
 
I had my old landlady suggested as a friend once, who I'd only ever contacted by phone/post, and have no mutual acquaintances with. Only thing I could think of was FB on my Android phone checking through my numbers against those listed on profiles - I never looked at the permissions when installing it, but I wouldn't be surprised if I granted it permission to stalk me and signed over any future children in the process.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Did you ever send them an email from the email account you signed up with or vice versa? The code to create the links is probably rather complex but the basic idea is as RDM says.
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I sent an email to a work colleague of his through the same email address that I signed up with, not to him. If it worked it out through that, then that's scary.

RDM said:
But you probably have friends that are friends with their friends. Degrees of separation and all that.
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I doubt it. I have very few friends in real life as it is.
 
On FB topic.

A guy at work just got a load of copyright infringement warning emails off Facebook, because he posted a birthday video of one of his relations (with a music track playing in the background)

Turns out facebook scan all video uploads for specific audio traces - then delete any that match known songs or spoken samples. There's even websites explaining how to adjust the pitch, or insert blank parts into the audio signal just so you can get your movies uploaded ????

This Facebook thing is getting very worrying indeed....
 
Heliospherez said:
On FB topic.

A guy at work just got a load of copyright infringement warning emails off Facebook, because he posted a birthday video of one of his relations (with a music track playing in the background)

Turns out facebook scan all video uploads for specific audio traces - then delete any that match known songs or spoken samples. There's even websites explaining how to adjust the pitch, or insert blank parts into the audio signal just so you can get your movies uploaded ????

This Facebook thing is getting very worrying indeed....
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Youtube do exactly the same thing. It's an automated program called Shazam, I think, which scans all new uploads for infringements based on its database.
 
Yeah I've had that happen to my fairground videos on Youtube. They either get silenced or taken offline. All you can really hear are the kids screaming on the ride. My Youtube viewers are there to look at the machine, not hear any goddam traces of music that could have been heard from the DJ's box. Who would ever want to burn that audio onto CD? :rolleyes:
 
Did you "check in" where it was you went? If they checked in too and they are friends of friends then chances are Facebook put two and two together... no?
 
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