[Air-L] How does Facebook find friends?

[Stacy Blasiola]

I believe this is akin to the way in which gmail scans emails for keywords. I may not use gmail, but if I email a friend who does, then Gmail can scan the email I've written. 

Comparatively, if I don't allow Facebook to access my email list, but I have a friend who does and I'm on theirs, then Facebook will make the connection. 

In both cases, only one user has agreed to the terms. This seems problematic. I believe, particularly in the Facebook example, that it gives other people rights over our information that I'm not so sure they should have. 

-Stacy Blasiola

UW-Milwaukee
Graduate Student
Media Studies




Marco Toledo Bastos <herrcafe at gmail.com> wrote:

Anders,

This also got me thinking. It all started a few years ago when my
hairdresser, who I went to once, and who has sent me a few emails, turned up
as a
FB suggestion. We didn't have any friends in common and I most certainly
have NOT allowed FB to go thru my Gmail contacts (or any other account).
This all had happened once before when FB suggested another person with whom
I sure shared no friends whatsoever.

Since I'm dead sure I haven't given Facebook permission to contact my Gmail
account and FB sure isn't allowed to mine my cache, I was ready to go
paranoid (seemed like Facebook was stealing my Gmail contacts). But after a
few emails to friends and nerds of all stripes, we came up with the
conclusion that it was the hairdresser who allowed FB to collect *her*
contact info. That's how FB knew we had been in contact in a given moment.

Bottom line: there are only two ways FB could have gotten that info from me.
Either by mining my Chrome cache, and I refuse to consider this possibility,
or breaking into Googles's office in Mountain View, since Gmail was the only
place where I had that info stored. So getting back to your question, the
kid might not know his uncle's e-mail, but my two cent is that the uncle's
contact list sure includes the kid's name and/or his e-mail.

Either way, this is not good. But it is the future, and the future is here.

[]s
MTB

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