Something is indeed spooky with Facebook and their other products. I am friend with a guy on Facebook and a person with the same name ended up as a suggestion on Instagram - ok maybe not so spooky. But(!) this guy looked like my friend except like ten years older. So I guess the combination of same name + looked like my friend (Facebook Face recognition) made Instagram suggest this dude to me.
Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#42We'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…
So they Kevin Bacon it? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon) Has anyone generated enough fictitious people to determine the number of degrees they'll go to? I would imagine at 4 hops the list gets huge and well outside your personal circle but it'd be interesting to see some studies.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#43We'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.
The thing is: users explicitly allow facebook to do that when they agree to ToS, just as they allow it to store their personal photos, statuses, and messages.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#44A Twitter acquaintance had a phone call from a website owner where he'd just browsed their site, no relationship in any other way.
We think they did a whois on his IP address which was at his company address, which we all know is doable, but seeing companies proactively do this is crazy.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#45The most unusual friend suggestion I have received is a profile for the actor Steve Martin. It had two mutual friends, and appeared 20 minutes after a friend asked me "Have you ever listened to Steve Martin? The actor? He's also a bluegrass musician" and played a couple of songs on Spotify. Any ideas on how that came about? It's hard to believe it's anything other than some app listening to audio.
Do you log into spotify through facebook?
Spotify was running on my friend's desktop. I have no FB apps installed other than Instagram. I do not believe I had Spotify installed on my phone at the time, though in the past, I have, and logged in through Facebook.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#46Earlier 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.
The thing is: users explicitly allow facebook to do that when they agree to ToS, just as they allow it to store their personal photos, statuses, and messages.
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Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#47Factors 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…
Using the wifi at the doctor's office would be another methods of linking. (I know this doesn't apply to the poster, but just giving another method.) About 2: Email. I don't understand. If I send an email from my gmail address to his hotmail address, and both of us use the addresses for Facebook registration, how does that link us? And you say "either", so only one of us uses it for Facebook. I don't get it. About 3:…
>> email
I agree that it's likely not "either" but both email addresses matching but I'm convinced that some friend recommendations come from gmail. There's no other way.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#48We'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…
No,your doctor actually is not allowed to upload your contact information as a patient to Facebook. It is against regulations. Patient information is private, including contact information. If he or she has done so it IS nefarious.
Re: Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion?
#49We'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…
No,your doctor actually is not allowed to upload your contact information as a patient to Facebook. It is against regulations. Patient information is private, including contact information. If he or she has done so it IS nefarious.
Extract from wikipedia about protected health information below: note that names and email addresses are PHI and must be treated with special care....
Under the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), PHI that is linked based on the following list of 18 identifiers must be treated with special care:[1]
Names All geographical identifiers smaller than a state, except for the initial three digits of a zip code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: the geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and the initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000 Dates (other than year) directly related to an individual
Phone numbers
Fax numbers
Email addresses