zlacker

but some years ago I got an email from FB

I'm curious how it got your email -- and decided to use it. I have several publicly visible emails, and they've received plenty of spam, but none from FB like that.

>>userbi+(OP)
People allowing the app to access their contacts presumably. Contacts can contain email addresses as well as phone numbers.

>>userbi+(OP)
From your friends and family's phones, where they have a contact card for you, nicely labeled.

There's a lot of data flowing around out there, and people overwhelmingly willingly hand it over. You'd think that there would be a law that, having collected that data, they would be required to hold it in confidence - Not for you, but as an agent of the friend who gave them that data. And there likely is, but good luck getting it enforced.

>>userbi+(OP)
as far as receiving the email, it may have been one of their friends sent an invite, but the list of people they likely knew probably left a bigger impression than "so and so wants you to join facebook"

This is basically how LinkedIn grew their network - read your addressbook, put a "invite everyone you know" button in the on-boarding slideshow. Facebook just does the extra work of noticing your email in other people's address books, so they can tell you who your friends will be before you even sign up.

>>wackro+A
I'm pretty sure FB accessed the contact lists of some of my friends. I've never installed the app or otherwise interacted with FB.

I also know that one of my so-called "friends" posted a group picture with me in it, and labeled the people in the picture. At one point I did a search to see what information was out there about myself, and that picture popped up associated with my name.

I guess that I'm just another casualty of the information age, in spite of my best efforts.

>>wackro+A
They do the same in WhatsApp, the app collects your personal data through your aquintances, and they hold your social graph even if you're not a WhatsApp user.

>>jazzyj+V1
Nope, it wasn't an "invite" from any friend. It was an email from FB itself. My understanding is that this was a short-lived campaign of theirs that was discontinued after they got some blowback. But I'm sure they still maintain a dossier on me.

>>allear+72
I have resorted to actively asking people to not tag me in photos.

>>wackro+A
I know someone that did the initial internal report to Apple about this years ago. This is exactly what it is. They use your contact data to create what are essentially graph nodes in a database, even if you've never signed up.

Not sure how much of that has changed since then. But contact data is by far the most valuable mined from phones. Facebook is no exception.

>>userbi+(OP)
Dude, sometime around 2010-2014, FB was asking users for the email accounts of their friends 'to contact them on their behalf'. I may have the dates wrong, but I remember being pretty pissed at the time, as my so-called 'friends' were feeding them not only my email but other info as well through polls and stuff. . I never used FB at all - yet I was getting emails as described by author, but years ago when they pulled that BS. I'm on Facebook and linked to it without ever opting in, because of what my own friends/family/coworkers give them.

>>nerdpo+w3
We reach.

But with ML facial recognition I figure the jig is up.

>>junon+Ha
Probably FB has enough tech and data to recreate a virtual you as NPC in metaverse.

>>JKCalh+sq
The jig is up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_AI

>>Jansen+4v
"'Login with Facebook' today to claim your NPC in the metaverse" /shivers

>>politi+7w
Clearview is notable only for their brazenness. It's easy to code up face recognition these days if you have the data, and again, it's brazenness (in scraping) which is Clearview's main advantage here.

In general, AI that's hawked at CEO types and police is mostly snake oil, inferior to what you can make yourself if you read hackernews and are willing to dive into Arxiv.

>>dessan+b2
There's a reason Facebook paid billions for an essentially free (and ad-free) chat app and chose to leave it that way.

>>wackro+A
Didn't LinkedIn once (ten years ago) ask for your email login credentials when you signed up?

I know it suggested my ex-girlfriend as a connection when I opened my account, five years after we'd last talked.

>>userbi+(OP)
Facebook doesn't scrap random websites for contact info. They used to rely on connecting to your Hotmail/Gmail account about a decade ago, and parsing contacts from people "stupid" enough to install FB app on their smartphone when such things started to spread. Facebook certainly knows my phone number although i've never had a Facebook account: that's completely fucked up.