Shocking facebook privacy intrusion

[BulletproofPat]

Hey guys I need some paranoid experts advice, I have been considering getting facebook because a girl keeps telling me to, but I've always been conserned with the privacy issues.
First of all my worry is for the unlimited amount of potential issues that I don't know of yet, but more specifically if I had to choose my main worry it would be about breaching my alias,

4 years ago I did a clean slate on my identity, I moved to a new country, changed my cell-home, email address, shut down my domain-name and completely stopped contact with all but my very closest friend/family (which I did through a new email-address).
If I get a facebook I obviously want to only have it visible to friends of my new life, which I thought would be easy, but to test the waters out I created a dummy profile from my work IP with a new random name that I've never used before, I filled in completely wrong information to make it untraceable (different location, age etc),
First thing I did was search for my girlfriend, then I searched for another girl I'm seeing, looked throught their friends and stuff, then got bored and closed down the window.
I didn't add them or anything (since it's just a dummy profile, planning on using a better name and more accurate information + pic later).

4 hours later I open facebook again, was thinkign about to creating a new profile, and there was the scariest shit I've ever seen...
To the right of my profile is a little tab that says "suggested friends", there was a very familiar face from my past before I went exile.

HOW
THE
FUCK
did facebook know that I knew him?

If I had made a real FB-profile and added my new friends and if this person had found it, knowing him it would not be that farfetch to believe that he would have tried to send as much dirt on me (photoshopped pictures and lies, and perhaps even some true pictures and stories which may be embarrasing) as he could to every friend/lover/co-worker on my profile just to spite me (he and others has already done this to my old friends, but I don't care about that since I cut off contact with those old friends anyway, it's my new ones that I'm conserned about).

Am I paraniod and nothing bad would happen? perhaps.
Has this person and all my other enemies matured over the years? perhaps.
But that's not a gamble I would like to take.

I did a google on how the 'Suggested Friends'-function works and here is what I found:
a) people with similar interests, location, age etc < my profile was completely empty apart from age which I set to really old.
b) people you had serached on and their friends < I ONLY searched on those 2 girls I mentioned, who certainly don't know my old friends in my old country, and I've never used facebook before as far as I can remember and I certainly never searched for this particular person.
c) friends of friends of friends etc < I never added any friends to my dummy profile yet.
d) reading your emails and email-contacts < I did not allow FB to read my gmail (you have to enter gmail password for that) and even if it did (very unlikely) I had it signed up to one of my very rarely used alias email accounts which has no connection to my old life.

so WTF!?!

Btw it might be worth mentioning that jstu because he was on MY 'suggested friends' doesn't nessesarly mean that he can see me, but if FB connected me with him I don't see why it would be impossible for FB to do the opposite (let him see me),
if that were to happen he wouldn't see my real name, but he might recognize the picture (and I don't want to have to have a really bad picture on my profile just to hide my face).

Btw I'm not afraid of this particular person so please don't suggest police etc (and this is not a complete creep or anything, since I've not had the slightest contact with him last 4 years I'm very certain he is not wasting his time trying to track me down conciously), it's more in general I want a bit of anonomousy.

The answer might be simple: ppl like us cannot use facebook, so don't use it!
But even if that's the sad answer then I would still like to know how this connection was technically feasible, as a web-programmer myself (amongst other things) I certainly don't see any sense in this.

[h3rm35]

Weird story, I'm not sure how that would happen. The only thing I could guess is that it's a VERY strange coincidence (unlikely,) or that one of the intelligence agencies that Facebook has teamed up with has some knowledge of your identity change, and has decided to go fishing in places it suspects you might be... Facebook is a creepy place, but most of the web is these days - there are scores of articles on this forum about why you need to be particularly careful out there on the interwebs, even up to one I posted the same day you wrote this.

I would stay the fuck away from facebook if I were in your situation (even fake profiles) - If the girl tells you that you need a profile to be with her, then you might want to consider another girl.

[JFK]

My guess would be that facebooks analytic engine found a match between the two other people you looked up and the result was the "suggested friend"... i.e. they both at one point in time looked him up.

Nevertheless I will never sign up for any of those services.

[h3rm35]

How to Restore Your Privacy on Facebook

I still suggest boycotting, though.

[drummer]

[BulletproofPat]

JFK: none of the 2 girls I looked up should have any slightest knowledge of that person (altho ofcourse you never truely know, but 99.999999% likely they have no idea about him).

h3rm: restricting access to your profile (as suggested in that article) is only relevant if you actually have any info on it, I didn't fill in anything except like a completely false age.

drummer: yeah I've watched that one, it's kinda mindboggelign that they might indeed by combining facebook info with other info such as internet-usage monitoring etc.

[Aceprint]

I definitely agree with you JFK, that the FB randomly suggested match friends. However, it is the proof that facebook is very vulnerable in terms of privacy. This is a long term issue and I was proved it because I read it in many articles.

[SiLVa]

I still boycott FaceBook.
A pretty good friend of mine told me a couple weeks ago that he was going to Vegas with a bunch of mutual friends. And he knows Im not on FB and that I refuse to sign up for an account there.
I was like, "Well thanks for clueing me in, you never told me..."
You know what he says?
"Thats why you need facebook man, I had it up on my page."
I kept my composure, but I was really kind of pissed off.
I said to him, "So you're telling me I need facebook for you to let me know your planning on going to Vegas with a bunch of friends of ours? Like we havent spoken on the phone or even in person on more than one occasion since you started planning it?" I wasnt too mad because I cant go anyway, planning already to go away at the end of July but just the way people think sometimes drives me crazy.
Dude looked at me like I had two heads and changed the subject... needless to say, we havent spoken as much as we used to since then.
If we're not good enough friends that you cant tell me in person or at least through a phone conversation whats going on in your life, just forget it. What the hell, I'd even settle for an email. But Im not going to be checking for updates on your FB page, fuck that.
People seem to have shit all backwards, they have this attitude like if you dont want to look at their FB status, then that means you dont want to be friends. Oh well...

[h3rm35]

(06-17-2010 04:30 PM)SiLVa Wrote:  I still boycott FaceBook.
A pretty good friend of mine told me a couple weeks ago that he was going to Vegas with a bunch of mutual friends. And he knows Im not on FB and that I refuse to sign up for an account there.
I was like, "Well thanks for clueing me in, you never told me..."
You know what he says?
"Thats why you need facebook man, I had it up on my page."
I kept my composure, but I was really kind of pissed off.
I said to him, "So you're telling me I need facebook for you to let me know your planning on going to Vegas with a bunch of friends of ours? Like we havent spoken on the phone or even in person on more than one occasion since you started planning it?" I wasnt too mad because I cant go anyway, planning already to go away at the end of July but just the way people think sometimes drives me crazy.
Dude looked at me like I had two heads and changed the subject... needless to say, we havent spoken as much as we used to since then.
If we're not good enough friends that you cant tell me in person or at least through a phone conversation whats going on in your life, just forget it. What the hell, I'd even settle for an email. But Im not going to be checking for updates on your FB page, fuck that.
People seem to have shit all backwards, they have this attitude like if you dont want to look at their FB status, then that means you dont want to be friends. Oh well...

most people I know that understand the issues with facebook yet still have accounts got sucked into it in a similar way to the way your "friend" tried to suck you in... it makes me think that he was probably sucked in the same way, and that that type of behavior is epidemic. Misery loves company.

[SiLVa]

(06-17-2010 09:15 PM)h3rm35 Wrote:  most people I know that understand the issues with facebook yet still have accounts got sucked into it in a similar way to the way your "friend" tried to suck you in... it makes me think that he was probably sucked in the same way, and that that type of behavior is epidemic. Misery loves company.

Yup. I know what you mean. And he was sucked in that way. Its basically peer pressure, believe it? Lol fucking peer pressure to join a stupid networking site.
I try not to knock people for getting on FB. I understand the "good" things about it, and thats why I dont try to preach about what I think. I could really care less about it, but it starts to bother me when people kind of punish you or look down their nose at you for not following the herd. Especially so-called friends of mine that know me and know why I dont want to have anything to do with it.
My younger brother even has a FB page, and he's like most people on there, addicted to it. Its always up on his PC at work. I try not to bother him about it, but he knows how I feel about it.

[h3rm35]

maybe there's some kind of subliminal programming embedded in the site? Who knows? Not me - I can't stand those fucking places... I boycotted myspace too, back when it was in facebook's place, because it was a Murdoch outlet and I don't trust newscorp. at all, and I didn't want to participate in building their company at the expense of my privacy.