Do you ever wonder about the "people you may know" section of facebook?

[disneyfan90]

Sometimes when people show up on there, it's plain eerie. Four years ago when I was working at a certain company, one of my coworkers showed up. He and I have absolutely no friends in common and we aren't part of the same network. He is also twice my age, which really meant that we didn't have anything in common on facebook as far as I knew. I didn't even know that he was on facebook, and so I was surprised to see him on there. When I stopped working at the company, his profile also stopped showing up on my facebook. A few days ago, I saw him at some event, and now he's back on that list. I don't understand this?

 

Here's another example, and I think this one is even stranger. I saw my dentist a few days ago for the first time and now I found him on the "people you may know" section of my facebook as well.

 

Does anyone know how facebook determines who you may know? How could it have possibly known that I interacted with my dentist a few days ago? I find it odd that people I have many mutual friends with, people who are in my network, and people who I look up every now and then haven't showed up. I hope this has nothing to do with who viewed your profile, because then I'll definitely stop viewing people's profiles haha.

[Jessie1231]

I've wondered this also. My ex boyfriend's new girlfriend showed up on my suggestions. He has me blocked so it isn't like he was a mutual friend. But then I was wondering weird stuff like if he took her places he took me, and Facebook somehow sees this by knowing my location? She and I don't live in the same town at all or have friends in common and I've never checked her page for anything, so I have no idea what happened.

[preraph]

Facebook mines your information, your email lists, your surfing activity, so they see what you look up and all that and if you don't stop them with settings, they will tell everyone what you're doing. They find one person you know and use their list and your other friends' lists to find people that pop up on more than one and decide you might know that person too. Even on Twitter, this happens. Everyone anyone I follow follows or follows them, they tell me I might know them. Everyone you follow or follows you or has given access to their other social media account contact lists or email list is getting "people you know" info drawn from all your info sent to them. That's why I'm not on there. i don't want my business contacts to be seeing everything and everyone I am interested in. I'm quite sure some of them would retaliate because I'm not their political party, for example, or be appalled at my interests.

[carhill]

Heh, yeah I get those 'people you may know' emails from FB because they mined e-mail lists of people I've had contact with over the last 20 years on the internet. I've never had a FB account and my registration e-mail for my long-neglected MS account is different and I never get such emails from MS. FB is data mining and probably selling that information to others too. Business 101 on the web. What are we going to do, sue them? Heh....