HN Explorer

Tell HN: Deeply creepy people you may know, suggested by Facebook.

13 points by hoodoof ↗ HN
So I'm on a dating site, chatting to a nice girl. A few messages back and forth through their system.

There's no identifying information in my profile. She has my first name and that's all apart from my suburb, which is listed on the dating site. Also I don't know anything about her except her first name and suburb.

Now I'm not a big Facebook user but I do check in from time to time.

So I log in to Facebook and click on the notifications and in the list of "People you might know" is this girl from the dating site, same photo, and her full name, which I didn't know till this point - I only knew her first name. I've never searched for her, never tried to find her in Google or Facebook or anywhere else on the Internet.

So What The Fuck? I mean really, WHAT. THE. FUCK? Can I say WTF any louder?

How is this possible? And is it Facebook's fault that this information is leaking?

I've had online stalkers before and somehow it looks like Facebook is making it super easy for them.

I really wish these goddam creepy "people you might know" suggestions were illegal because they are the scariest fucking using of technology next to the NSA. LinkedIn is probably worse.

Can someone explain how this happened?

If anyone from Facebook is here at HN, please explain how your company knows this information. Someone needs to explain how this is possible.

28 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 79.3 ms ] thread
gus_massa
Did you sign to this site using Facebook?
hoodoof
To the dating site? No. My user account is created via email.
S4M
You didn't link your account on the dating site to your facebook account, but maybe the girl did, so facebook knew that the girl was in touch with your dating account, and somehow they had access to your dating profile which includes your email, which they matched in their email database to get your facebook account.
bro-stick
FB likely buys, sells and aggregates graph data from numerous other social sites and applies deep learning in order to pre-stalk possible connections and make other suggestions for users' "convenience."
anon6_
If you did use Facebook Connect or authorize an FB app in anyway, that would probably be enough to generate a link somewhere.

In any event, men tend to be the pursuers on dating websites. It sounds a lot like bragplaining. Except normally females do it, and they're a lot likely to see you as creepy because numbers are lopsided in their favor.

Not saying you're creepy - but the reason dating websites are a time sink is everyone's ecstatic about telling their story - no one's interested in yours. Even if they were very humble, you'd be competing against 10's to 100's of pastes.

rnovak
You don't even have to, all you have to do is visit both sites from the same browser, and they can use the ad-network cookies to track you.
sbank
Maybe this won't be a popular response, but what we do know is that Facebook couldn't give a single fuck about your privacy or protecting your private information. (Insofar as they "care" it is to protect their own interests.) It is prudent to assume and expect that they will exploit you in any way possible. So if you are so concerned, why are you even on Facebook?
Mimu
I would guess she searched for you.
hoodoof
But HOW? All she knows is my first name and suburb, and I have a very common first name.
ProblemFactory
With a more complex search perhaps?

Facebook parses and actually works with queries such as "single [gender] friends of friends of friends who live in [X] and like [Y]".

notahacker
If images used on the dating site also appear on Facebook then Google Images can do the rest...
bro-stick
Doubtful. Email and social graph correlation is usually how sites monetize to keep it "free" and survive.
partisan
Wait, wait... You signed up for Facebook, used it, continue to use it, and then got upset when they violated your privacy?

So What The Fuck? I mean really, WHAT. THE. FUCK? Can I say WTF any louder?

How is this possible?

J_Darnley
How much do you value your privacy? Do you allow requests from Dating Site to Facebook? Unless you explicitly value your privacy and take steps to ensure it assume all webpages report back to Facebook, Google, Twitter.
rnovak
Have you not heard of the Facebook ad network? Are you under the impression your dating site doesn't advertise?

"how is this possible?"? That's been obvious for a while now. They track you. Everywhere. Same with google.

narrowrail
Doesn't "everyone in IT/CS" use tools like Request Policy, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc. or a good old-fashioned hosts file to prevent said tracking? Not to mention VPN+Privoxy on a VPS?
rnovak
Well, considering I'm in the IT/CS group and I don't use those tools, the idea that "everyone" uses them is demonstrably false.

Secondly, the fact that it's the most probable explanation of the link between facebook/dating sites, and it hasn't been mentioned yet....clearly they're not that popular.

Finally, can people stop thinking that the way they use the internet is the same way everyone does? That's so far from reality it's not funny.

narrowrail
I do not believe everyone uses the internet like I do, but I have assumed many people on HN do something similar. Considering the number of threads I've read about such tools on HN over the years, I don't think it is far fetched to believe that many people on HN use these tools.
[dead] narrowrail
HN is not Metafilter, or whatever, where everyone is clueless about such things, and I think it is almost insulting that you assume we users here are so clueless. Sorry, but please remember the web is not magical to * us *.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
DanBC
Ridiculously hostile response, especially considering the original fucking post is form someone who clearly doesn't know about this stuff.
narrowrail
In person, I have been called rude many times, but this comment wasn't hostile. I honestly can't believe the over-reaction to my comment. I've read some heated and hostile stuff on HN over the years, and my comment is not even close. I'm really not sure what happened here, and I don't think swearing is appropriate.
dang
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10634484 and marked it off-topic.)

It's not ok to attack another user like that on HN. Please don't do this.

Since you used the pronoun "we", I think you need a refresher about what defines our community. It isn't knowing stuff; everybody here knows different stuff. The two key values of HN are civility and substantiveness. Your comment broke both of those, especially civility, which is the more important of the two.

Please (re-)read the guidelines and take care to follow them from now on:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

narrowrail
Just in case anyone comes across this later, this was a response to another comment, but it has now been "detached" so it reads like a response to the OP, which it is not.

NB: Communicating by text to strangers efficiently is hard.

dang
That's why we always say what the original parent was, so people can read it if they want to. I've moved that sentence to the top of my comment to make it clearer.

Yes, communicating by text to strangers is hard. That's why we have guidelines that everyone here is required to follow. It's hard enough even if we do follow them, but hopeless if we don't.

Irishsteve
The person could have internet stalked you and viewed your FB profile. You could have exchanged phone numbers and one of you is using the FB app which uploads your contacts in the background.

IF this is the standard FB friend suggest then I don't believe its via their ad network. So the above suggestions are more likely.

dreamdu5t
It's happened to me as well. Facebook has unmasked the full identity of many girls I've simply messaged through apps like Tinder or Happn. It's so predictable I often check the suggested friends expecting to see people I've been chatting with on other services.
aforarnold
I had the same experience with facebook but in a different way, facebook suggested my father and my uncle though I have completely different nick name. No mutual friend what so ever. I still can not figure out how facebook recommendation system found my dad and uncle!