how does "people you may know" work on Facebook?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know now facebook finds the "people you may know" that pop up on the right? Mostly they are friends of friends, but now a strange person is popping up -- I am in law enforcement, and I recently prosecuted him. We have NO mutual friends, so i can't figure out why he is popping up as a person I may know, unless he is search for me on facebook and facebook recognizes that? I am not an active facebook user, and I have every privacy setting set to friends only, so I can't imagine he can find out anything more than a google search would yield, but still i find it unsettling.

I also find it odd that if you search for someone, you may then end up as a person they may know......
does anyone know how this works?

[Anonymous]

i'm sure it's a very complex and proprietary algorithm so it's not completely published anywhere. FB is not owned by Google but there are a number of ex-Google executives who are now at FB, and I'm sure they know some of the main ingredients to the Google search algorithm and have applied it here.

I bet it's based on both # of similar friends but also google general search data somehow. FB would have no way of know who you personally have searched for in Google without being able to tie your computer's IP address to your account for search data, which is next to impossible.

[Anonymous]

I thought they searched your email accounts for people with whom you've corresponded.

[Anonymous]

This happens to me too, OP. My opposing counsel have popped up, along with people I've never heard of. I believe it's a combination of people's address books being downloaded into Facebook automatically and somehow some sort of googling method.

[Anonymous]

they can't read your yahoo or gmail account without you letting them, and believe me, yahoo and google are not sharing this data w facebook. our world's are just smaller than we think they are.

OP, there is probably someone you know that is 3rd degrees of separation from you with the guy you prosecuting and FB is using that data(defense counsel, someone from law school, etc.), or they are seeing HIM search for you on FB and using that as data for people you may know. hard to believe it would be from outside sources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know now facebook finds the "people you may know" that pop up on the right? Mostly they are friends of friends, but now a strange person is popping up -- I am in law enforcement, and I recently prosecuted him. We have NO mutual friends, so i can't figure out why he is popping up as a person I may know, unless he is search for me on facebook and facebook recognizes that? I am not an active facebook user, and I have every privacy setting set to friends only, so I can't imagine he can find out anything more than a google search would yield, but still i find it unsettling.

I also find it odd that if you search for someone, you may then end up as a person they may know......does anyone know how this works?

OP, this actually makes perfect sense. If you run a search on someone, I think its reasonable for the FB computer to assume that that person is a potential friend and may know who you are. FB also matches you based on your interest, work, school and the things that you "like".

[Anonymous]

To search on FB you're generally logged on- so I think this is from FB tracking searches of you by others. I've seen this pattern to- our realtor was suddenly a person who might know us despite us have no degrees of connection at all- odds are she just looked us up on FB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know now facebook finds the "people you may know" that pop up on the right? Mostly they are friends of friends, but now a strange person is popping up -- I am in law enforcement, and I recently prosecuted him. We have NO mutual friends, so i can't figure out why he is popping up as a person I may know, unless he is search for me on facebook and facebook recognizes that? I am not an active facebook user, and I have every privacy setting set to friends only, so I can't imagine he can find out anything more than a google search would yield, but still i find it unsettling.

I also find it odd that if you search for someone, you may then end up as a person they may know......
does anyone know how this works?

Hm. I find that strange. Also in law enforcement - and all of the "people you may know" that I have, are always people who are friends of friends. This has always been a concern of mine as well. Are you accessing FB from your home or work computer? I would just send the people at FB an email asking them to block him as a "people you know" - simple to do and you have a writen record of the request.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To search on FB you're generally logged on- so I think this is from FB tracking searches of you by others. I've seen this pattern to- our realtor was suddenly a person who might know us despite us have no degrees of connection at all- odds are she just looked us up on FB.

I think so, too. I had some really strange people pop us as 'people you may know';one of the accounts clearly looked fake to me, leading me to believe that it was an ex I blocked from my FB page

[Anonymous]

I thought it just displayed friends of your friends. So you see a list of your friends' friends and find people who you know in common. Does it go beyond that?

[Anonymous]

It's definitely people who searched for you by email, etc because I am not on fb and along with an invite to join I got a list of potential friends who were in no contact with the invitee. I was skeeved at first but it's a pretty effective method.

[Anonymous]

well, it kind of sucks if Facebook can put you in touch with people who have searched you out. I have looked up some ex-boyfriends that I would be mortified for them to learn that I was cyberstalking them!!

[Anonymous]

OP here. I access FB only at home. My work has it blocked. So I can't figure out how the guy is coming up. I have emailed with him from my work email, but never from my gmail. And FB definitely does not have acess to my work email (right?)
The only thing I can think of is that he has been searching for me on FB. But if that is true, than every person I ever searched for knows i looked for them, because I come up on their "people you may know."?? I hope that is not the case.

I googled the issue and FB's explanation does not include any indication that this is the case. But I will inquire.

Thanks everyone.

[Anonymous]

It's a bit too Big Brother for me.

[Anonymous]

He has searched for you on FB, or you have mutual friends in common (or friends of friends). FB only has your FB data and his FB to work off of. You would have to authorize them to see your Yahoo or Gmail or work email, and Yahoo and Google are competitors of FB so they are not sharing their data. (they can't somehow magically see your email list, and even then it's hard to know an exact person based on email address alone.)

It's not magic people, or scary. If you are worried about what others might see on FB, control the privacy settings on your FB account or better yet, get the heck off there.