The creepiness that is Facebook

[Nordic]

Here's something that Facebook is doing.

They are somehow suggesting "friends" to you based on people you have e-mailed in the past.

And not people you have e-mailed through Facebook, but people you have e-mailed in some cases before you ever were on Facebook.

I'm no computer whiz, but the only way I think they can figure this out is by accessing your mail server OR your computer.

Now that's creepy.

I just had a "friend" suggested to me who is an in-law of mine. I haven't e-mailed her in probably two years. Before I was ever on Facebook and I'm pretty sure on a completely different computer. We are not "linked" together in any way on Facebook. Nada.

My stepdaughter is discovering the same thing happening. And one of her friends had my own grandmother suggested to her as a "friend" even though I don't think they've ever e--mailed each other.

It's just creepy shit.

[norton ash]

C'mon, don't you want to collect FRIENDS like baseball cards?

I joined Feckbook under pressure from real-wrold friends (primarily the ones who want to display pictures of their kids and host their own live family newsletter) and dumped it not long after. It's the website that goes out of its way to BUG you... in every sense.

[slomo]

It isn't as creepy as you think. Remember that in a social network, the edges are comprised of two units: the two people engaged in the friendship. Only one of them need provide access to his/her mail server for FB to have access to the others' email address.

So, in other words, if any person who has ever emailed you or whom you have ever emailed opens up their server to FB, then FB will recognize you as a possible friend of that person.

In fact, FB does ask you to provide access to your email. It's kind of sneaky the way they do it, because it looks like they are asking you to log into FB (since you log in with your email address). I might have accidentally allowed this, but for the fact that my passwords are different for my email and my FB account.

Somewhat OT:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20000336-38.html

A propaganda piece if there ever was one.

[Nordic]

It isn't as creepy as you think. Remember that in a social network, the edges are comprised of two units: the two people engaged in the friendship. Only one of them need provide access to his/her mail server for FB to have access to the others' email address.

So, in other words, if any person who has ever emailed you or whom you have ever emailed opens up their server to FB, then FB will recognize you as a possible friend of that person.

In fact, FB does ask you to provide access to your email. It's kind of sneaky the way they do it, because it looks like they are asking you to log into FB (since you log in with your email address). I might have accidentally allowed this, but for the fact that my passwords are different for my email and my FB account.

Somewhat OT:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20000336-38.html

A propaganda piece if there ever was one.

So you're saying that it might not be MY e-mail they've hacked into, but the other people's involved.

I'd have to say that's cold comfort. And it's completely unknown as to whose e-mail they've hacked. Maybe it's mine, maybe it's the other people involved, I have no way of knowing.

Either way it's pretty obvious they've hacked into the e-mail, somehow or another, of me or these other people.

Creepy!

[justdrew]

it might not have anything to do with email. they could be looking at the people the suggested-person is "friends" with and the people you already are, noting that there are many in common and making the suggestion based on that.

[Simulist]

What's really creepy is that privacy for individuals — throughout America, both on and off the internet — is dead.

[slomo]

What's really creepy is that privacy for individuals — throughout America, both on and off the internet — is dead.

Indeed.

[slomo]

So you're saying that it might not be MY e-mail they've hacked into, but the other people's involved.

I'd have to say that's cold comfort. And it's completely unknown as to whose e-mail they've hacked. Maybe it's mine, maybe it's the other people involved, I have no way of knowing.

Either way it's pretty obvious they've hacked into the e-mail, somehow or another, of me or these other people.

Creepy!

I wouldn't say they "hacked". I mean, maybe the did, but the friend recommendation engine can easily be explained without hacking, in the sense of surreptitiously gaining unlawful access to email (yours or somebody else's). In order for the engine to work, all that is needed is for a large proportion of FB users to explicitly allow FB access to their email contacts. This is something that FB asks you to do. With enough people doing this, and with some additional relatively simple network algorithms, the search engine can function tolerably well. So, it's not creepy in the sense that you describe.

However, the broader social implications are certainly creepy, including the willingness of large numbers of people to allow access to their private email. And, I'll admit - I allow Google a huge window into my mental processes, since I use gmail quite a bit. But I won't let FB in.

[82_28]

Since I am so much better than everybody else (JUST KIDDING!), I have avoided facebook like the plague that it is. And not even out of paranoia.

I feel that enough is enough already. I tried their myspace (with a fake ass name, 99 year old arab mormon account), I did the blogging thing, I commented for years on the groundbreaking Metafilter, I delved into newsgroups, I set up my first aol electronic mail account through a CD they sent me in the snail mail, I was an early lower middle class adopter of mobile telephony, I heard a story in the 1990's on NPR about ICQ, downloaded that and spread the word. I had fun with it. But fuck facebook. I will never succumb.

Friends have wanted me to get in on it as well, because people they are hooking up with there are asking about me. I tell them to give them my email address. It ain't natural. We evolved in the trees and later on in small villages. Facebook, I do not feel, is an extension of that. It is an unnatural way of communication and ultimately voyeurism. Not that I care what people see or read about me, but I do not think it is fair that I read what others from my past are doing either -- even though they have voluntarily offered it.

But to address the "paranoia" part -- I also do not want a single poorly thought out password being my solitary degree of distance from having a modern trackable identity. It seems too dystopian. I also will never buy a vehicle made after 1980. I also will never wear a pair of pants that aren't Carhartts. I will never buy a house -- but I will buy a nice tent or a nicer camper. I will never work in an office. I will also never lock my doors, no matter how crime ridden and crazy my hood can become from time to time. Things like that make me appear so sad to others -- "don't you have any ambitions?"

Of course I do. It's to get "you" to quit caring about this shit!

That said, I certainly am no better than anyone. If you like FB, go for it. I just spent hundreds on Denver sports team apparel when in town. Talk about a useless money pit! But! After I'd bought a vintage Broncos cap for more than it was worth, a couple of hours later I ran into Mark Jackson, the dude who caught the pass in "The Drive" from my youth. He signed it with a "God Bless". The money spent was worth it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drive

Go Nuggets!

[Nordic]

it might not have anything to do with email. they could be looking at the people the suggested-person is "friends" with and the people you already are, noting that there are many in common and making the suggestion based on that.

Well yeah, no shit Sherlock, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a person with whom I have absolutely NO network connections of any kind, and the cases I'm talking about are cases where there are absolutely NO network connections like those of which you speak.

The ONLY way they could have suggested this particular person to me would have been by accessing (and maybe I'm using the word "hacking" loosely, but if somebody GETS INTO MY COMPUTER I'm gonna call that "hacking") either my computer or her computer.

As in the other cases I'm talking about.

And it's fucking creepy!

[Searcher08]

My issue is not with the recommendation system - and people can be connected in quite extraordinary ways. An interesting exercise is to sit down with a friend and REALLY brainstorm all of your social networks and capture as many people and look for as many 'seed' networks as you can. I have had cases where two good friends of mine were themselves good friends, but neither of them knew the other one knew me!

IMHO the biggest issue with Facebook are the 'Apps'. I thought they would have some quality system, like Apple or Google.

They dont.

I had a Yahoo email account that was compromised within days of using an innocuous looking Fb App. These Apps harvest emails from your address book and no doubt sell them to spammers / phishers. They have NOTHING to do with Facebook itself. Avoid them like the plague!

[Nordic]

These Apps harvest emails from your address book and no doubt sell them to spammers / phishers. They have NOTHING to do with Facebook itself. Avoid them like the plague!

Well there ya go. That's probably how they do this stuff. I've never done any of those stupid aps, or played any of their stupid games, or taken any of their stupid tests.

So it might be on the other people's end and not mine.

Still. It's creepy. There's absolutely no way that Facebook should be able to find a connection from me to these people WITHOUT invading someone's computer (maybe not mine, but it doesn't really matter) and STEALING their information from it.

It's fucking creepy and I can't believe they get away with it.

[Username]

[justdrew]

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
... theories are based around the work of BF Skinner, who discovered you could control behavior by training subjects with simple stimulus and reward. He invented the "Skinner Box," a cage containing a small animal that, for instance, presses a lever to get food pellets. Now, I'm not saying this guy at Microsoft sees gamers as a bunch of rats in a Skinner box. I'm just saying that he illustrates his theory of game design using pictures of rats in a Skinner box.

[Cordelia]

Not about the creepiness of Face Book, but other possible problems....I've never had the slightest interest, so I've never engaged with FB, but a couple of weeks ago I had a problem with my computer and called the tech I was lucky to find (lucky because he calls back right away, will walk me through a problem and fix it over the phone without charge, and never makes me feel stupid when I'm computer illiterate). Anyway, he didn't call back for several hours and then apologized, explaining that he was overwhelmed by customers' calls to fix a problem that was shutting down their computers and it was mostly affecting people who use Face Book. Since it was late and he was tired, I didn't ask any more questions, but he said people would be smart not to use it........