Here’s How Facebook Knows Who You Meet In Real Life
Here’s How Facebook Knows Who You Meet In Real Life
It may seem like Mark Zuckerburg is personally tracking
your every move — but there's another explanation for those creepy friend
requests you're getting
By Alejandro Alba May 16, 2017 at 12:15 PM ET
A couple months ago a friend and I went to Colombia for
vacation. While we were at the beach one day, we met a group of people and
spent several hours hanging out with them. We never exchanged phone numbers or
email addresses, we didn’t share much information about ourselves other than
our names and where we lived, and we didn’t connect on social media. I didn’t
even have my phone on me at the time. However, when I got back to New York and
checked Facebook, I saw that two of the people we met popped up in my “People
You May Know” recommendations. Weird, I thought. Actually, it’s creepy. Is
Facebook tracking my every step?
Facebook’s brand is based on the community it creates,
and its mission is to connect everybody in the world. So it only makes sense
that the platform frequently suggests new friends for users to add to their
networks. But in the past, the company’s suggestions for connecting users have
raised some eyebrows.
For example, take the story about a psychiatrist who claimed
her patients were popping up on her list of suggested friends (and on each
other’s lists) after visiting her office, which is obviously problematic for
medical privacy reasons. The psychiatrist is far from the only Facebook user to
discover mysterious friend suggestions — for years there have been stories of
people who go on dates, attend parties or browse through a book store only to
see people they interacted with in person pop up in their Facebook at a later
date. None of these connections are coincidences, of course. So how does it
happen?
Just how the company goes about identifying potential new
connections — especially when the users have no obvious digital connection to
one another — isn’t always clear. The first possible reason, and most likely,
for someone to appear in your “People You May Know” list is that one of you
searched for the other, according to Facebook. So if Angel and Angie (two
random strangers) go on a blind date and Angel searches Facebook for Angie’s
profile, but doesn’t add her as a friend, Facebook will suggest both add each
other. It only takes one person to trigger the algorithm.
Another possible explanation is that the two parties
shared some type of digital information such as email or phone numbers, since
most people use either to open a profile. So if you share your contacts with
either Facebook or Messenger, someone you recently added to your contacts will
be suggested first over someone you’ve had on your phone for years.
A Facebook spokesperson said the company does not see who
users text, call or email, therefore the algorithm wouldn’t be able to make
friend suggestions based on that. Yet, if you’re using email programs on your
phone such as Gmail, you are saving email addresses to your phone and Facebook
will be able to see them — again, only if you’re sharing your contacts with
Facebook apps.
There is also a theory that Facebook tracks users’ web
activity, but in a statement Facebook debunked it. Facebook apps use web
cookies for targeting ads, but not for recommending new friends, a spokesperson
said. Facebook also claims it no longer tracks its users with location data to
rank friend suggestions based on where they live or work. The company said
location tracking was just a brief test it ran last year at a very small
city-wide scale.
Facebook said that its friend recommendations are based
on variety of factors, which includes mutual friends, work and education
information, groups you’re part of, and any digital information stored on your
phone that is shared with Facebook. Other than that, Facebook deems all other
connections coincidences.
Other social media platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr
aren’t usually scrutinized about follow suggestions because they seem to be
based on interests and mutual friends, rather than just random people you’ve
met literally 10 minutes ago. Facebook, however, is not the only platform that
has received criticism for the questionable ways it suggests new contacts.
LinkedIn recently had to issue an apology because it pushed a new update that
told iPhone users it would turn on their Bluetooth in order to share data with
people nearby and “connect” them even when not using the app, if they didn’t
opt out.
The update has since been “fixed” and LinkedIn apologized
for confusing users, since the language used in the update did not specify
which data was being shared and under what conditions. If all of this still
seems freaky to you, shutting off Facebook’s access to your contacts is quite
easy. All you have to do is go into your smartphone’s settings, look for your
apps section, tap on Facebook and disable the “Contacts” access.
Experts also recommend that people disable Facebook from
using location data, which can also be toggled under the same Settings menu.
Another piece of advice for those who are concerned with privacy is logging off
from Facebook whenever going to medical offices, big events, or even theme
parks like Disney Land. But perhaps the most failsafe approach is just to
uninstall the Facebook app from your phone and wait to see all your
notifications from your desktop computer when you get home.
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