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The "you may know" is indeed very random which i think you would've noticed.

Originally Posted by vurt
The "you may know" is indeed very random which i think you would've noticed.

Is that a fact? My whole point is that it hasn't been very random. Not for me.

Originally Posted by JDR13
As far as them just being friends of friends, that would be extremely random, and doesn't make much sense to me. So it's going to let me know that I might know this person just because they're listed as a friend of someone who listed me? Um…ok.

Actually, if you map out the social networks of people you will find that for most people they share common subgroups of people they know with other people. So it actually is a pretty good guess that if you know Bob and Sally knows Bob then chances are that you know Sally, too.

You may know has not been random for me either. Then again I don't friend random people on the internets.

I'm still curious what the evil master plan is though.

There is currently Spam/Scam going on as well. Almost daily I get Spam mails of someone pointing out to "Notifications" and scrambling the links into something like … this "tiny URL" service.

And I do know it's spam because I've never been on Face Book. Same with Pay Pal, when the scammers tried it, years ago.

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
Actually, if you map out the social networks of people you will find that for most people they share common subgroups of people they know with other people. So it actually is a pretty good guess that if you know Bob and Sally knows Bob then chances are that you know Sally, too.

Still doesn't explain how it can send email to people who are not members with a list of their old buddies or classmates or whatever, and telling them to join because their friends are there right?

There is also a lot of other weird, things…. like the person a who wrote an angry message to his wife, and got adz for divorce lawyers… the alghorims behind are scary stuff. Or the couple who shared an account and the wife figuring out her birthday gift from the facebook adz she were getting on the account….

Or burglars who use the site to clean your home….. since they know you are on vaccation. They don't even need to be your friend it is enough a friend asked you a good vaccation and a friends "friend" see it….

There is also a lot of other weird, things…. like the person a who wrote an angry message to his wife, and got adz for divorce lawyers… the alghorims behind are scary stuff. Or the couple who shared an account and the wife figuring out her birthday gift from the facebook adz she were getting on the account….

That is just how the advertisement work on such sites. They check for key words in recent messages that you have written and your age/gender/location/relationship status. I wrote a message about warhammer on a friends wall, and now I've been getting advertisement from games workshop. But targeted advertisement like this has been a reality since the dawn of social sites. Heck, if a forum is supported by google ads then you might end up seeing some strange ads based on what people recently have typed out in each individual thread. Considering the fact that this is not actually based on saved data, but just a recent scan of your activity I don't really consider this a huge issue.
And if you want odd advertisement, write about science and/or set your work and/or education to something science related. I'm currently getting plenty of ads for lab equipment. I don't really think I'm in need of a controlled environment test chamber, but thanks for asking.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
Or burglars who use the site to clean your home….. since they know you are on vaccation. They don't even need to be your friend it is enough a friend asked you a good vaccation and a friends "friend" see it….

I kind of agree with this concern but I make a conscious effort not to go down that path. I caught a girl in my backyard the other day for example, clearly just an opportunist looking to steal something - and she was thick as two bricks. These are the people that break into your house, not criminal masterminds who have scoured the interwebs for victims.

EDIT:

Just reading the local news and this seemed relevant to this topic:

http://theage.drive.com.au/despite-t…025-1mi8j.html

I've seen heaps of cars with these 'this is my family' stickers on them and wondered why these people feel the need to tell the world this information about themselves. I saw a car parked out the front of a house the other day which depicted a single woman with a cat - that's the house I'd be breaking into!

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
There is also a lot of other weird, things…. like the person a who wrote an angry message to his wife, and got adz for divorce lawyers… the alghorims behind are scary stuff. Or the couple who shared an account and the wife figuring out her birthday gift from the facebook adz she were getting on the account….

This hasnt got to do with any algorithms, it's called coincidence. Billions of people are spammed with ads from just about everywhere, every day, year after year. Ofcourse it will sometimes, or even quite often, just "click" for many of those, that's kind of the idea with ads.

I opened a facebook account a couple years ago to locate some old friends and it worked. Then I realized we no longer had anything in common and there was a reason they were old friends.

After reading weeks of it's cold out, i'm tired and don't want to go to work, I'm eating pizza for lunch, ect, ect. I lost interest and stopped logging on. About 3 months later I went back on to find my account was very active. Friend request, game notifications and the like but what really ticked me off was people had been tagging me at restaurants and other places. posting pictures of me and my coworker that I take lunch with was tagging where we were everyday. This may not be a big deal to some but for me it is. That shouldn't be posted unless I want to post it.

I turned off all that stuff in my account and then cancelled it altogether shortly after. Now when I go out I don't let people take any pics and try to stay out of group pics. It's a good way to find people but unless your an attention whore and don't mind everyone knowing where you go and what your doing then it's really not worth it.

Originally Posted by vurt
This hasnt got to do with any algorithms, it's called coincidence. Billions of people are spammed with ads from just about everywhere, every day, year after year. Ofcourse it will sometimes, or even quite often, just "click" for many of those, that's kind of the idea with ads.

You obviously don't know anything about internet marketing.

Unlike you i use FB every day, so i should've seen a lot of this freaky, scary stuff by now. Since i haven't, and neither has anyone i know of, i can't say i believe it really exists, at least not in the scary sense you're talking about.

It would also be the easiest thing in the world to implement, but the effect would probably be like you describe, it would freak people out too much, not exactly the desired effect of advertisements..

Believe me, they do have targeted ads. Heck, when I just logged in I noticed one targeted at people who study at the university that I'm studying at. The fact that it is so easy to tailor-target advertisement is what makes social networking sites profitable. As it is quite unlikely that I'll buy womens makeup, I won't get advertisement for that, my sister does get that though. She on the other hand gets no advertisement for sealed environment test chambers.

I have an account, and I occasionally have a look at what people are posting. I almost never post anything myself though - I really wouldn't know what I should post that I would feel comfortable broadcasting to such a diverse group of pepople as I have in my "friends" list (e.g. everything from old school friends, family, friends from university, work colleagues, to my young nieces and the babysitter girls). Most of my good friends and family aren't on facebook anyways.

Fnord, I'm sure it exists, i just doubt its as super deep and privacy violating as some people here seems to believe.

That I agree with, it just looks for specific key words, and posts advertisement based on that. It is not like someone sits and manually checks your posts.

Originally Posted by vurt
(…)I'm also not sure exactly what a law abiding citizen has to fear anyways?

I'm a law abiding citizin, still I lock my house and do not invite everyone in, not even to have a short look around. Why should I not be afraid on the internet and take similar precautions? It's not the majority, the good people, I fear.

Originally Posted by vurt
"But, but - it's my privacy?!" Yeah ok it's your privacy, and everyone is super interested in you and your "privacy"? yeah right. In your dreams maybe.

'Everyone', what matters is those that ARE interested. One, not being a (real) friend, is enough to be harmed in a serious way. Google 'Identity theft', or 'Identity Theft and Facebook'.
Having *some* data (e.g. name of your sister) makes it easy to google for more and *better* data (your sister may not be as thoughtful concerning her own and hence your personal data). Getting more and better data makes it easier to google for the *needed* data.

Originally Posted by vurt
In Sweden all data that is sent, even telephone calls, is stored.

That would be against basic European laws. The thing that's stored is when and who did (you) contact (you) - when and who - not the contents, not the exchanged information. Storage time varies per (European) country, but it's not allowed to store it permanently.

Originally Posted by vurt
(…) Unless someone is a sloppy criminal that likes to boost over the internet i don't see what the big deal is.

You assume that there'll always be good laws or good people in power who will respect, support and uphold you, the law abiding citizen.

Originally Posted by vurt
And people whining about privacy and FB, if you decided to share something with your 200 friends, maybe it wasnt that "private" in the first place, and again, probably not that intresting to neither the FBI or the CIA?

Many people trust strangers or vague friends because they themselves do not use, would not use or do not see how one could use, ordinary information for bad purposes, purposes not being FBI/CIA purposes.

I'm sorry but i have very little sympathy for people who whine about problems they've brought upon themselves. I have 20 friends on my FB account, most people i know have 200+ ""friends"" and they share all kinds of private information. Is that FB's fault? Should we Blame The Internet?

What i'm arguing about in your quotes is not that there arent shady individuals, but that some people seems to think FB itself has some kind of evil master plan and that its impossible to protect yourself against frauds, scams, burglary and, ofcourse, that your privacy will be fully exposed if you register with FB. That's such bullshit.

The real threat to privacy is all the companies that have private databases of information about you can't challenge, can't correct, can't even see, and that are used for things like hiring and housing decisions. They track people from birth; my kids (or us for them) received age and sex and interest appropriate advertisements in the mail basically from birth.

I used to try to pollute the data by filling out random information on those "surveys" but I'm not sure it ever did any good.