So I hope you're all good. Seems to have settled down a bit since the post-flurry of those 9 year fireworks. Maybe you're all mourning for MJ.
so I was just wondering if any of you have any idea how this is happening. I'm reasonably aware of the dubious tendrils of the internet reaching into unusual places, but I'm intrigued how Facebook recommends that I become friends with my girlfriend's grandmother.
Now I get people's parents suggested to me as friends all the time - I don't tend to take them up on the offer, to be honest - but my girlfriend has never been on Faceboke in her life - and I don't know anyone else who could possibly be friends with her gran... so HOW DOES IT KNOW??
Posted by
Grim..., around 27th July 2009:
Did you give it your list of email contacts when you first signed up?
Posted by
cal, around 28th July 2009:
i'd be surprised if you don't have a mutual contact
or maybe someone recommended her to you as a contact - that feature's been around a while
Posted by
che, around 28th July 2009:
Perhaps there is some sort of time travel element to it and you will find out that your girlfriend's grandmother is in fact your girlfriend.
Posted by
syl, around 28th July 2009:
It don't feel right, some granny's stalking you....
Posted by
syl, around 28th July 2009:
It can find mutual friends using their email addresses if they are on your email list. Did you sign up with Gmail or one of those?
Posted by
Miki, around 28th July 2009:
I have also been baffled by their psychicness at suggesting contacts
(but then also decided it was email related)
Posted by
beargod, around 28th July 2009:
maybe she found you, grannies seem to be too tech savvy these days, we need to find something that they arn't into and use that.
How about wood modelling and carving, anyone for that?
yeah no facebook's just one of the holycrap sites i won't touch except for business communications. linkedin's another one. i've seen "suggestions" and "links" on both, even with psychotically-tight (even by my standards) privacy caution, that make it absolutely clear that the T&Cs on many sites are flagrantly flouted.
i have put placer/holder accounts on most likely-surviving social sites under my own name and all relevant aliases, in order to stall would-be ID-hijackers.
(and hence since then am more than a little leery about sensible ways to respond to genuine friends who've tapped me via same. sorry, all.) you only need to get unlucky once. but i have been scrupulous throughout
(it's not hard, if you think about it/prepare for it, upfront), absolutely and utterly, about separating all possible connections.
despite precautions at a level that are routinely described as "anal" or "insane", i have been staggered by linkedin's and facebook's jaw-dropping disregard for other sites' nominal T&Cs. the only way they can be doing what they're doing is by reading other sites' cookies and traffic (eg personal yahoo emails linked by IP not just name), and mapping/joining that across machines+OSs.
originally i was more worried about facebook, but linkedin has connected surreally across interactions separated by machines, OSs, and continents. i have stared with hackles prickling at the names of genuine friends presented as people i should know, on a new deliberately anonymous mal-named a/c created on a new machine at a new company for a specific purpose, 5 years after i e-communicated with them last, immediately after i fire up my home machine. said home machine never having touched that site, let alone downloading (on mac) any form of (windows) trojan.
Yeah, it's a bit confusing. So I'm certainly not using my real name on either of my facebook accounts, so there's no way she can have found me - to be honest, you can probably find out my real name if you look through all my wall posts, or just look at that picture of me in the Guardian that I'm tagged in... but I can't imagine people are going to make the connection.
I do have Ms Moc's email addresses in my hotmail address book, which is the email I used to sign up, and I'm sure she has people like her grandmother etc in her address books: We certainly don't have any friends in common - but I'm not as careful as Salty, from the look of things...
Posted by
Miki, around 2nd August 2009:
I don't think the pope is as careful as salty
the pope champions the supremacy of the male, and wears a dress. you're going to take security advice from HIM?
Posted by
jeffry, around 15th August 2009:
a link for mr and mrs hawes
www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2...
oh and yeah, facebook is teh rubs.
Posted by
Saltation, around 17th August 2009:
"jeffry"? according to facebook, a great-nephew of a grand-uncle of one of the aunts of a friend of one of my mother's cousin's children's child-minders once read the blog of someone in your outlook/yahoo/google/flickr contacts list. on a tuesday.
Posted by
Saltation, around 17th August 2009:
i can't be sure WHICH tuesday. facebook is a bit anal about privacy.