One of the comments explains it -- the mobile app uploads all contacts. So when he entered in his phone number, existing Facebook users using the mobile app were matched because they had his phone number in their contacts.
I swear this exact same thing comes up over and over again every few months.
I don't have the time to write much about this right now, but long story short - the top comment here is correct. When his some of his real life friends used one of the Facebook smartphone apps it uploaded their contacts to Facebook. Then when he signed up, it recognized him as being in his friends' mobile contacts and suggested them to him.
There was a great article here last year from somebody last year who experimented with all of this with a few fake, isolated accounts. If anyone can find the link that would be great.
Basically he found out that the above was true. He also found out that since Facebook logs every search you make, people who had searched for his name before he ever signed up were recommended to him when he did.
Yes Facebook are denying this, but he had clear evidence that proved the contrary.
Meanwhile, most of my sidebar is full of Christian "like if you love Jesus" ads. No matter how often I mark them "uninteresting", they keep coming up, despite Facebook likely having plenty of information pointing at my non-religiousness.
Try an incognito window. I don't understand why Google refuses to let people read public G+ content if they are logged into their Google account but haven't opted into G+, but I've seen a lot of people report it.
You can always use a proxy if you're that concerned. Do you also block Google ads, Youtube's embedded videos (Google owns Youtube), and never search with Google?
I understand your point though. My posting this on Google+ is ironic actually, given the lack of privacy I'm complaining about.
Edit: Wait I think I misunderstood. You mean "get past" to read the post at all? I thought "public" meant that everyone (even when not logged in) could read it.
An interesting experiment is that if you have FB on your smartphone, you can use the "Find Friends" feature to dig up all sorts of profiles for the contacts on your phone. I think it uses a combination of phone #'s and email addys from GMail...?
Among others, I've found:
* several FOSS devs that I've emailed
* a few people that I've had brief business dealings with years ago
* my landlord
* several that I recognize as wrong #'s from the past (such as the girl who texted me 10+ times even though I told her she had the wrong #)
* some old co-workers from 5+ years ago (I have some old emails from them)
* quite a few that I don't even recognize
They quite literally will trawl every piece of possibly-relevant data on your device.
Of course the recommendations are made from the friend he just made! It's just traversing the public, non-privacy-violating graph of mutual friends, and suggesting a small (and possibly random) subset of nodes near to him.
There's no conspiracy. He just doesn't understand how much information is encoded by that first friend he made.
On a different note, as I've put in other comments, Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations. In other words, it won't use private information other people have generated, like what profiles they visit or what messages they send or what contacts they have, to create recommendations for a person who can't access that information.
> Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations
How do you know this? Do you work for Facebook, or are you just guessing?
It seems to me it could be a combination between chaz's explanation and yours. If the friend he added is also friends with the OP's grandmother, cousins and other friends then it seems OK that Facebook would "recommend" those people to the OP.
But then, why those people and not all of his other friend's friends? Could it be using the contact list of the recommended friend's to prioritize those recommendations over all others?
I think one of the problems is whilst Facebook doesn't use 'private information other people have generated' it does leverage information your friends have shared in non-obvious ways to a layperson.
If it's unclear or people don't understand how Facebook is making its recommendations and as a result become creeped out then that's a problem - whether or not those recommendations were created according to the privacy policy.
Actually, the friend is completely unrelated from my other friends and family. I met him through an online game and he's not even from the same country.
I don't mean to make this a conspiracy theory, but I don't understand how Facebook can conjure up so much information to identify most of my relatives.
You've been posting this stuff all over the thread. How about a link to the source of "Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations". I'd also like to see them define it the way you have, because as written that is pretty vague.
If one isn't in the US or Canada Facebook is theoretically legally obliged to send you all data it has about you, if you request so. They seem to make that more and more difficult though.
LinkedIn has been similarly creepy to me. Someone I have never met with whom I share zero common connections has begun showing up in my recommendations because I viewed their profile once months ago.
LinkedIn once suggested someone with the same (very uncommon) name as my neighbour, but it wasn't actually my neighbour. I have never contacted my neighbour electronically. Either a weird coincidence or it somehow worked out I know someone with that name, somehow.
At least there you know why Linkedin thinks you may know them, and you don't know them so it doesn't really matter. What I care about is that it figured out my entire family tree without much to work with.
Facebook officially does not ever perform any privacy-violating recommendations. Since information about how another user searches is not known to you, it is not used to give you a recommendation.
[+] [-] chaz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xSwag|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bravura|13 years ago|reply
I also wanted to point out the Facebook acquisition of mysterious Kuala Lampur startup Octazen:
http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Facebook-acquire-Octazen-Soluti...
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/19/octazen-what-the-heck-did-f...
They were supposedly masters of scraping and contact importing. I would love to know more about this story, but there is not much published about it.
[+] [-] troperx|13 years ago|reply
I don't have the time to write much about this right now, but long story short - the top comment here is correct. When his some of his real life friends used one of the Facebook smartphone apps it uploaded their contacts to Facebook. Then when he signed up, it recognized him as being in his friends' mobile contacts and suggested them to him.
There was a great article here last year from somebody last year who experimented with all of this with a few fake, isolated accounts. If anyone can find the link that would be great.
Basically he found out that the above was true. He also found out that since Facebook logs every search you make, people who had searched for his name before he ever signed up were recommended to him when he did.
Yes Facebook are denying this, but he had clear evidence that proved the contrary.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] furyofantares|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mappu|13 years ago|reply
Here's a dumb mirror of the post content: http://ahcovl.pen.io/
[+] [-] ceejayoz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|13 years ago|reply
I understand your point though. My posting this on Google+ is ironic actually, given the lack of privacy I'm complaining about.
Edit: Wait I think I misunderstood. You mean "get past" to read the post at all? I thought "public" meant that everyone (even when not logged in) could read it.
[+] [-] k3n|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k3n|13 years ago|reply
Among others, I've found:
They quite literally will trawl every piece of possibly-relevant data on your device.[+] [-] doctorpangloss|13 years ago|reply
There's no conspiracy. He just doesn't understand how much information is encoded by that first friend he made.
On a different note, as I've put in other comments, Facebook officially does not make privacy violating recommendations. In other words, it won't use private information other people have generated, like what profiles they visit or what messages they send or what contacts they have, to create recommendations for a person who can't access that information.
[+] [-] codeka|13 years ago|reply
How do you know this? Do you work for Facebook, or are you just guessing?
It seems to me it could be a combination between chaz's explanation and yours. If the friend he added is also friends with the OP's grandmother, cousins and other friends then it seems OK that Facebook would "recommend" those people to the OP.
But then, why those people and not all of his other friend's friends? Could it be using the contact list of the recommended friend's to prioritize those recommendations over all others?
[+] [-] objclxt|13 years ago|reply
If it's unclear or people don't understand how Facebook is making its recommendations and as a result become creeped out then that's a problem - whether or not those recommendations were created according to the privacy policy.
[+] [-] lucb1e|13 years ago|reply
I don't mean to make this a conspiracy theory, but I don't understand how Facebook can conjure up so much information to identify most of my relatives.
[+] [-] thefreeman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobias3|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niggler|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] discountgenius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cameronh90|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grima|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthuggins|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doctorpangloss|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redwood|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slvrspoon|13 years ago|reply
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