I'm not on Facebook  (...yes, I must be one of the 6 or 7 people on the planet who isn't ! ),
and I don't want to be on FaceBook....  EVER !

Yet I keep getting invitations in my E-mail box
from "people" wanting to "friend" me  ...

This of course is some kind of scam to get me to join FaceBook.

( I was "invited" by Adam Courchesne ... , a name that "seems" familiar, but that I don't recall...
.... could that be someone on MAACA ? )



But what REALLY gets me, is that in the "invitation" it has a list of
"people you know or would like to have as friends",
and then proceeds to list 12 seemingly random names.

4 of which I've never heard of, but the other 8 are people I actually know.

How does FaceBook know that ?

I'm not on FaceBook, so there is arguably NO info about me .
Of the people I know... :
one is my brother-in-law in Seattle WA
one is my cousin's wife in Montreal
one is my back-door neighbor (...which I've spoke to twice in 5 years... )
two are people I know from Playing Ultimate Frisbee
one is a guy I worked with 12 years ago
and two are "acquaintances" I've meet via other people at various social functions...

How can FaceBook possibly link all these people to me
.. when I'm NOT EVEN ON FACEBOOK ?

At first, I thought these people might have entries or pictures where my name is mentioned in their profile,
but surely people I've meet in passing for 5 minutes would not have me in their profile.

Then I thought of e-mail distribution lists, but again,
surely not all these people would have my e-mail info.

... and then what about the 4 people I've never heard of ?
Why did they get [wrongly] selected as possible friends ?

The only thing I can figure out is that FaceBook somehow "mines" for information
about people ( Google searches, etc... ) and tries to make links with existing FaceBook users.

Either way, I feel somewhat "violated" that I'm targeted by FaceBook in this manner.
Imagine all the info they would have on me if I "were" a member.

FaceBook is the DEVIL I tell you .... repent !  Repent NOW !



... but seriously, I'd be curious to know how FaceBook does this...

Thanks,
Steph

Sometimes it just sends along a list of other "friends"  known to the inviter to help prompt the invitee to join (since it will help you determine that you really do "know" the inviter).

Oddly enough, if you screw up entering your password, as part of the test to get your password back, it will start showing you pictures of your "friends" that you have to identify.  Embarassingly, many of my facebook friends I haven't seen for 20 odd years and sometimes I can't identify them.  SOmetimes, after 20 years, you just don't want to identify them any more!  

And once you're on and identify a few friends, it starts looking for friends you have in common with other friends and makes intelligent suggestions based on the "web" of friendships it finds.

Twitter even better.

I am picking my nose right now.
I am cleaning the gum off my shoe now.
I am thinking about having a nap right now.
I might boil an egg here soon. If I am really daring it might be two eggs.

WTF?

Twitter..

..I am leaving the house now.
..putting the key under the mat.
..going to the movies.
..great movie!
..Hey! Someone robbed my house!

When you sign up with Facebook, you need a vaild email address.  You have some sort of option to opt out, but otherwise you're giving Facebook permission to take your contacts list.  I get 'Bob has joined Facebook, why aren't you cool too?' invites all the time, because I'm part of the 6 or 7 people you mentioned, Steph.  Facebook, Taco Bell, and Bill Paxton - the unholy trinity of the devil himself.

On a lighter note, go watch the Facebook episode of South Park - pretty funny!
Daniel

...the story gets even better...

I figured out where I know the "inviter" from...

He's a guy I play Basket-ball with once a week during the winter.

The only link I have with him is a mail list I have of the guys I play with
to know if we have ball for any given week.

The kicker is that the guy is NOT on facebook,
but someone else with the same name is.

So the "Adam Courchesne" that invited me, is NOT the same Adam I play B-Ball with ...

I also found out that my wife borrowed my computer awhile ago when
hers was down.

She IS on Facebook and used my machine to log on.

So I figured the thing planted some kind of Trojan on my PC
which scans MY e-mail addresses to find matches on FaceBook.
(...although some of the names it suggested as friends are NOT in my address book )

So I'm still not 100% sure how it matched me with all those people,
but somehow I suspect my PC is now "compromised" ...

I'm going to run a few "disinfecting" programs to see what I find...


Steph

Quoted from websherpa

Sometimes it just sends along a list of other "friends"  known to the inviter to help prompt the invitee to join (since it will help you determine that you really do "know" the inviter).

There is absolutely NO WAY the inviter would know any of the people on the "suggested" list.

And like I said in my other post,
it turns out that the "inviter" is not even someone I know,
but someone ELSE with the same name as someone I know, who's NOT on FaceBook...

Weird...

S.

Quoted from McMean

When you sign up with Facebook, you need a vaild email address.  You have some sort of option to opt out, but otherwise you're giving Facebook permission to take your contacts list.

Contact list from what ?
Your actual mail account, or your Facebook "friends"  ?

(...because I'm not on Facebook, so I can't be anybody's friend... )

Quoted from McMean

I get 'Bob has joined Facebook, why aren't you cool too?' invites all the time,

So they scanned Bob's personal e-mail account for his list of contacts ?

My personal e-mail is via Hotmail,... so I don't even have a contact list on my PC.

Does Facebook and Hotmail have an "agreement" of some kind ?
(...wouldn't surprise me mind you... )

S.

There's actually an anti-Facebook social networking site coming out soon called Diaspora.  I'm looking forward to making the switch.  I don't use Facebook for much these days other than (1) Following up on Stern, (2) Sharing pictures of our new house with friends and (3) sending and receiving invites to gatherings.

My grandmother had the exact same concern. She too is not on facebook but has received invites that spookily mention her friends.

My guess is that facebook just randomly selects friends from the inviter assuming you may know them. But if you get invited by two different people, facebook will use the friends that they have in common, which increases the chance that you know them. Like a magic trick, the effect is powerful, but the explanation is simple.

BTW, there's no way facebook tracks your google searches. Google and Facebook are major competitors and wouldn't dare share information between each other.

And it's highly unlikely that Facebook would plant a trojan.  It does have apps for cell phones though, and you can tell it to search your contact list for potential friends matches.  But as Jonny says, it uses a type of artificial intelligence to try to guess relationships and then use that to its advantage to get you to join.

So for example, if you have friends on facebook, it will correlate duplicate friends from you friends and then suggest them to you as potential mutual friends (using the logic that if two of your friends have a friend in common, then possibly you know that friend as well).  When you try to search for a friend, it will present you with a list of people with the same name, but then try to narrow that list by looking for a contact within your friend's contacts and possibly other filters too (like school, geography, work, etc.)

Nefarious indeed, but also brilliant.  And hey, I actually like 2 out of the trinity mentioned, and Facebook isn't one of them. (And I only like Taco Bell because it's the absolute cheapest way to feed your kids and their friends, other than perhaps pizza, when they're insisting on take out. And then they don't come back again becase they all got the runs.)