# Freaked out by the "People you may know" feature on Facebook. Help! **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 8, 2010, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freaked-out-by-the-people-you-may-know-feature-on-facebook-help/556464 "2010-10-08T08:22:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freaked-out-by-the-people-you-may-know-feature-on-facebook-help/556464/21 "2010-10-09T17:04:42Z")
> [@Rusalka](#): > > > [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > > > Facebook allows people to enter their email address books in to help with the “People You May Know” feature. Odds are a mutual friend that has both of you in their address book did this and Facebook rightly assumes that you and your former officemate know each other. > > > > No voodoo, nothing you did, just how Facebook works. > > No, I am absolutely positive that we do not have a mutual friend. Remember, the 13 friends I have are friends I know well and all of them have nothing to do with my former line of work. Besides, that would mean that a bunch of other people like this would pop up, and that hasn’t happened. It’s just this one guy. Is it possible he entered _his_ address book and Facebook matched my email address to his? How do I keep my email secret from other people? I’ve already changed all my privacy controls to lock everything up. > > So does this mean that if I let facebook use my address book, other people that I may have emailed once will get me in their “people you may know” page? You may have mutual friends of friends, though. I have a FB account under my real name, and another one under “Sarah Feena,” which is specifically for SDMB and Mellophant friends. Imagine my :eek: when Sarah Feena was friend-suggested to my regular account, and my husband’s! There is NO identifying info on the Sarah Feena account, no connection with my regular account whatsoever…how could this happen?! Well, pretty easily, actually. Sarah Feena is FB friends with a certain doper, who is FB friends with a 3rd party that I don’t know, but who is also FB friends with my husband. The fact that my husband and the Doper both know this lady is pure coincidence; we all grew up and live in the Chicago area, and they both just happen to know her. WORLD COLLIDING…AAAAAAUGGGGGGGH! ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freaked-out-by-the-people-you-may-know-feature-on-facebook-help/556464/22 "2010-10-09T19:51:03Z")
> [@Rusalka](#): > > No, I am absolutely positive that we do not have a mutual friend. Remember, the 13 friends I have are friends I know well and all of them have nothing to do with my former line of work. One thing I’ve found through these sites is that people are connected in weird ways. Sally, who I know from volunteering might know Jane my ex-co-worker because their children are in kindergarten together. six degrees ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freaked-out-by-the-people-you-may-know-feature-on-facebook-help/556464/23 "2010-10-09T20:35:55Z")
> [@Sarahfeena](#): > > > [@Rusalka](#): > > > > No, I am absolutely positive that we do not have a mutual friend. Remember, the 13 friends I have are friends I know well and all of them have nothing to do with my former line of work. Besides, that would mean that a bunch of other people like this would pop up, and that hasn’t happened. It’s just this one guy. Is it possible he entered _his_ address book and Facebook matched my email address to his? How do I keep my email secret from other people? I’ve already changed all my privacy controls to lock everything up. > > > > So does this mean that if I let facebook use my address book, other people that I may have emailed once will get me in their “people you may know” page? > > You may have mutual friends of friends, though. I have a FB account under my real name, and another one under “Sarah Feena,” which is specifically for SDMB and Mellophant friends. Imagine my :eek: when Sarah Feena was friend-suggested to my regular account, and my husband’s! There is NO identifying info on the Sarah Feena account, no connection with my regular account whatsoever…how could this happen?! Well, pretty easily, actually. Sarah Feena is FB friends with a certain doper, who is FB friends with a 3rd party that I don’t know, but who is also FB friends with my husband. The fact that my husband and the Doper both know this lady is pure coincidence; we all grew up and live in the Chicago area, and they both just happen to know her. > > WORLD COLLIDING…AAAAAAUGGGGGGGH! Something similar happened to me, I recently found two of my FB friends from different social circles commenting on each other’s posts. They’re in different cities and I know them from different places. So either they happen to know each other directly, or I linked them together somehow in a manner like yours and they clicked “friend” for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freaked-out-by-the-people-you-may-know-feature-on-facebook-help/556464/24 "2010-10-10T01:16:33Z")
No my profile is locked down and computer is probably more secure than yours. Do a google search of your email, or a username you use on many websites. Odds are you will get a few results, chrisbooth12 gives me results for this message board for example. You do not think facebook has crawlers that do the same thing? Find a popular BB see if user A has any friends, cross check the names. There you go. Its not magic. With enough data you can know anything [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freaked-out-by-the-people-you-may-know-feature-on-facebook-help/556464.md?page=1)