How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You've Ever Met

It's a strange game, where the only winning move is not to play.

If you attach your phone number to your Facebook account and someone adds you to their smartphone contacts list and their phone number is attached to their Facebook account you could show up as a recommended friend suggestion without even knowing.

Read the article. 'People you may know' including a sperm donor and the child fathered from that sperm? Defense council, unrelated to Facebook?

That's some deep, deep diving in databases; places Facebook should not have access to.

Read the article. 'People you may know' including a sperm donor and the child fathered from that sperm? Defense council, unrelated to Facebook?

That's some deep, deep diving in databases; places Facebook should not have access to.
That's part of the problem with Facebook along with the phone number, in both cases it's a violation of privacy and as you said a tool for data collection.

Privacy laws have not kept up with technology. My data should not be used by companies like Linkdin or Facebook, which I have no relationship with. It should be illegal to ask for your contact data on your phone, and not say what it's going to be used for beyond 'looking for friends'.

I still get Linkedin messages sent to my government email address, but my Linkedin profile is disabled and does not include my government email address. It's because the Government of Alberta publishes it's phone list publicly, and companies scrape that data as 'just another source', because they can.

Privacy laws have not kept up with technology. My data should not be used by companies like Linkdin or Facebook, which I have no relationship with. It should be illegal to ask for your contact data on your phone, and not say what it's going to be used for beyond 'looking for friends'.

I still get Linkedin messages sent to my government email address, but my Linkedin profile is disabled and does not include my government email address. It's because the Government of Alberta publishes it's phone list publicly, and companies scrape that data as 'just another source', because they can.
A lot of people don't know about the linking of phone numbers that could possibly lead to stalking without the victim knowing. The thing about Facebook it's become the social media connection platform everyone is using which means even some people who were always against it have jumped on the bandwagon because it's become the norm of networking.

Interesting and scary article.

I'm glad I never bothered with it even when I had friends bug me years ago that I should have an account because it was the "in" thing to do. I know that doesn't mean my name and other info isn't available due to whatever people I know have put out there.

This.