If someone has loaded their email address book (under "find friends" when they register) with your email included, they will show up as a friend suggestion.

gmail puts ads across the top of my email account that magically have to do with specific emails i've just written the day before. very creepy. example: i had emailed a friend about a midwife, and voila! the next day there was an ad saying something like, "do you want to become a midwife? midwifery school etc etc - sooooo freaky. i'm just glad i have no secrets and my email is pretty boring LOL

Really? I only get friends of friends on my list.

I think it's mostly people who have searched for you.

sorry *maiden

Do you have a Big Tent account? My fb started suggesting people from my mom's club that I barely knew! I don't list my last or maden name and we had no connections so I knew they hadn't viewed my profile or searched for me. It took me awhile to figure it out.

Use http://www.ghostery.com/ to block ads. Use Tor https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en to block your IP address. Internet 101.

Anonymous wrote:The looked at yr profile so FB suGgests them.

This.

I've been under the impression that this is exactly how it works. If someone looked at your profile, FB knows that and that person will be included on the list of your suggested friends, along with 'mutual friends', aka 'friends of the friends'. It is entirely possible that that person looked at your profile by mistake, or was looking for another 'Jane Smith'.. but once they've visited your profile they will be suggested to you.

But it also works the other way around, so if you ever looked anyone up thinking they'd never find that out, you might be wrong.

Anonymous wrote:The looked at yr profile so FB suGgests them.

this. and if you searched for them.

It's the Age of Search. Haven't you noticed the ads here are on DCUM things you've recently searched?

The looked at yr profile so FB suGgests them.

I've heard that if someone searches for a name, it will suggest friends...

For example, say I'm looking for my old college roomate, "Jane Smith" ...so I plug in the name "Jane Smith" in the top search thing...and facebook gives me like 105 "Jane Smiths" to choose from. I look at the top 5, click on their profile, look at whatever info they have available to the public...but they are not the "Jane Smith" I am looking for. I keep loking, but never find the "Jane smith" I am looking for...Still, Facebook might let all those "Jane Smiths" that I looked at, that I am a "suggested friend"...

i don't even have a facebook acct and i get these notifications to my email.

Totally agree. Freaks me out every time.

I find it absolutely creepy that facebook suggests friends to me that even though I may know them, I have absolutely zero connection with them on the internet. They are not friends of friends, I have never sent them an email or ever written their name down in a word document and vice versa. I mean zero, zilch, nada connection. I'm rarely on facebook, my profile is not updated and there is nothing on my wall, I log on once every few months and to my amazement get these friend suggestions that has me wondering how the fuck facebook knows that I knew/know this person.

it makes me shudder just thinking about it.