Freaky Facebook Experience

Just a moment ago I freaked out at Facebook’s “suggested friend” feature. Typically, most of the people who do pop up there are either college friends I didn’t add yet, people I don’t know but went to my college, or people in the UAE or my workplace who have mutual friends.

This morning, the suggestion was for an awesome photographer who’s only link between the two of us is his presence on my Google’s RSS and a comment or two on his photo blog.

My privacy settings are super strict and I have blocked almost all FB application in existence except “the obvious ones” like wall and photos and whatnot.

I may have posted one of his photos on my wall. Could it be that FB was intelligent enough to match the URL to an existing profile? Or is Google conspiring against me!? Behavioral ads?

In any case as long as it doesn’t reveal I am an Angelina Jolie fetishist or questionable RSS feeds I have, I will try to move on :P

*expects Qwaider to give a lecture and a 3-post followup*




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Posted in: ZOMG

  • I swear this also happened to me (either today or yesterday, i honestly forgot).

    There is this guy who is a student at a university in a different country than me. We both work on the same area. I met him in a conference once, and now i am visiting near his university. But that is pretty much about it. I do not have any other association with him, no joint work, no blog comments, nothing .. yet Facebook suggested him as a friend. It is rediculous .. i was completely freaked out.

    My guess is that they are now crawling the web to find other info about their users to try to understand their social network graphs better. It is interesting, but too spooky :-D
  • jarofjuice
    I know!
  • trust me man, its better to be freaked out by strangers than be surprised by facebook when they suggest for you some horrible people you wanna forget about. :P
  • jarofjuice
    Ali -
    People use FB for different reasons. In any case I just found it strange it suggested someone I only from an RSS feed. He didn't request to add me or anything.

    Dreamy Villager -
    Woah! You never used that terminal before?
  • It is so "Easy" to freak you out ;-)
    I did have something annoyed me once but not on Facebook...When I was in college,we used to register to our courses by the internet with user names and passwords...I went to an internet cafe outside the university and started to type my user name to findout that the computer knows it.
  • Ali
    Why is it considered Uncool if a person adds people on FB :?:
  • jarofjuice
    I don't add them either, but the suggestion itself freaked me out!
  • Luckily I didn't have such an experience, I don't actually add people any more through the suggested friends, cause I don't know any more of those people, truly
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