Besides every other suggestion here, couldn't it be that your doctor actually is a friend of a friend?
Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#22The problem with all of these mobile apps is you just need ONE of your contacts to upload your information, and then you're fucked. That's why I've given up trying to hide my details because they already have it. The idea that all 100% of my contacts respect my privacy is ridiculous unfortunately.
Definition: Your "Facebook ____" is the lowest ____ of any of your "friends" that has a Facebook account.
Where ___ is any applicable attribute such as intelligence, privacy, etc.
Corollary 1: You will be surprised at who is included in the set of "friends" that have a Facebook account.
Corollary 2: You will be surprised at how low the lowest ____ is for your "friends."
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#23Factors that contribute to friend suggestions on FB: 1. Facebook tracking pixels on websites (if you visit a website with the pixel, you can be targeted in many different ways). 2. Email. If you have sent or received an email to the doctor, and either of you has associated that email to FB, you can be tracked. 3. Searching on FB, you say its unlikely for him to look you up on FB, yet theres always a chance that being…
Also it might be relevant that FB buys third party data: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-data-brokers-2016-12 It wouldn't surprise me if a credit card payment for a doctor visit might lead to such an association or suggestion.
Ugh. Hadn't thought of that. That means, probably, they are also filling in their social graph for people that have never touched Facebook at all.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#24Facebook suggests a person I keep seeing on my commute that also works in the same building as me (not same company). I always think the 0 mutual friend recommendations are a bit weird/interesting
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#25Facebook suggests a person I keep seeing on my commute that also works in the same building as me (not same company). I always think the 0 mutual friend recommendations are a bit weird/interesting
To be fair, users who appear to travel in the same circles (even just an IP address can reveal such correlation) seems like a fairly good choice for making that kind of suggestion.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#26We've gone through this many times, its nothing nefarious. 1) doctor uploads his contacts (phone number/email addresses) to facebook and sets his contact info 2) you upload your contacts and set your contact info if there's one match between them, facebook believes (correctly) that there is some sort of existing relationship between you. The fact that its professional and not personal and you want facebook to just be…
I think we could reasonably disagree about whether or not it's nefarious. Siphoning everyone's contacts is iffy to start with.
It's not exactly without consent
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#27May be due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#28Either you have searched you doctor, or your doctor has searched you.
I believe this is the correct answer, it happened to me as well. I got friend suggestion for my daughter speech therapist, and all our communication and appointments were done only in paper form. But I searched her name on FB out of curiosity. :-) OP: Can you exclude the possibility that the doctor just searched your name on FB? Why wouldnt he do that...?
A girl I talked to on Tinder a few years ago popped up on my People You May Know list. I befriended her and met up with her recently.
I brought it up to her, we wondered how it happened, and she admitted that she'd searched for my profile a week before.
I'd say this aspect of the system is a good feature. If you're searching for someone, it's nice to give them an opportunity to "independently" reach out to you.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also it might be relevant that FB buys third party data: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-data-brokers-2016-12 It wouldn't surprise me if a credit card payment for a doctor visit might lead to such an association or suggestion.
Ugh. Hadn't thought of that. That means, probably, they are also filling in their social graph for people that have never touched Facebook at all.
Right the "shadow graph."
I've also noticed other trends to where using a credit card at a store has resulted in receiving postal junk mail from the store I have just used the credit card at. I suspect credit card companies give give stores access to your credit card billing address when you use your credit card there.
Protecting against these creeping incursions is certainly a feather in the cap of crypto currencies.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we could reasonably disagree about whether or not it's nefarious. Siphoning everyone's contacts is iffy to start with.
It's not exactly without consent
It pretty much was the entirety of the Facebook app's life. And it only somewhat changed when Google introduced permissions where the user actually has to opt-in (post app install).