Big data gonna fuck ya:
sigmaleph:
thetransintransgenic:
grugq:
I was just looking through the friend suggestions on Facebook. A very old ex girlfriend from 20 years ago popped up. I truly can’t see how they made that link.
I’m very privacy conscious, and have been trying to use Facebook again after a 4 year hiatus, but with a negligible footprint on FB.
I haven’t had contact with my ex for twenty years
I don’t have any shared Facebook contacts with her
I am using a completely different email address for my new Facebook account that she cannot have.
I have never used the Facebook Messenger app on my phone.
I have never used the Facebook app on my phone.
I have never shared my contact list with Facebook.
I have never shared my mobile number with Facebook.
I have her in my contacts on Google Contacts, and hence in my phone contacts, but only an old Hotmail email address that I would surprised she even still uses. No phone number for her.
I have not viewed her profile, nor searched for her by name on Facebook
I even use a different name on Facebook to my legal name (I’m trans, so shoot me)
I only ever use the Facebook mobile website on my phone
I don’t live close to her, in fact I live in a different country, so we don’t have any location proximity
The only thing I do have is WhatsApp on my phone, but since I haven’t shared my mobile phone number with Facebook it can’t have tied my Facebook profile to my WhatsApp contact entry. I also don’t have my Facebook email address in my phone/Google contacts against my entry. It’s one I setup purely for my trans identity.
This is seriously creepy. How the hell have FB figured that out?
Update
I think I’ve figured it out. The steps go like this:
I delete my old FB account 4 years ago. I also delete the content of that account manually first (all photos, timeline, mobile number, etc), change the email address to a Hotmail alias address. I then apply for a permanent account deletion. I receive the deletion confirmation on that alias address.
My ex isn’t in my friend list in my old account, but her contact details were part of a contacts upload I did for the old account.
My old FB account had the mobile number I have still today. Friends will have that number and my pre-alias email address in their contact list.
I create a new FB account. I create a brand new email address, and never share my mobile number with FB for the new account. I also refrain from using any of FB’s apps except WhatsApp.
A current FB friend has FB Messenger or WhatsApp installed. They tied my contact entry to my old FB account since they have my old account’s email address and telephone number.
That friend changes the name of my contact entry in their phone via the name change that one of my FB current contacts made in their phone, which notified FB of the change via one of their apps on my friend’s phone.
FB matches my old account to my new account by name.
Hence, FB have tied my new account and my old account together, which was of course my express desire to avoid that.
How does FB Messenger tie to your contacts out of interest when it is installed? I’ve never used it, so I’m not sure how it integrates into your contact list. Is it like WhatsApp that offers you a WhatsApp link against a contact?
Wanna play a fun game?
Go back and read this again, but substitute “very old ex” with “violently abusive ex whom I had to run away from”.
(Which reading the story, might already be the case.)
TADA!!! Facebook DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THAT MINOR DISTINCTION.
Facebook is fricking optimized for this.
FACEBOOK IS EVIL.
During a Google Hangouts conversation, someone mentioned they could, when viewing the chats a certain way (I think through chat history?) see a different name for me. My birth name, specifically.
How? Well, my first gmail account, which I use in contexts where I am closeted, is associated in a few ways with another gmail account which I foolishly thought would allow me to talk to people without giving them my legal name. Recovery email and such. So of course google knows we’re the same person, and apparently has no problem telling everyone that.
I didn’t mind the relevant person knowing my birth name, they knew I was trans. But it could just as easily outed me to someone else. It could just as easily out me the other way, by telling someone who has my old account that I go by a female name sometimes.
Fun!
google is ruthless for promiscuously linking accounts and TELLING THE WORLD. i have been told by google engineers that of course they never link accounts based on phone numbers that’s just not possible and yet have had multiple reports that literally this has happened to people. can you unlink them? HAHA NO.
zero of said engineers have acknowledged any problem with the linking or the outing. they literally believe you shouldn’t be hiding yourself if you’re going to go on line.
two of these have also been the sort of people who, when asked to stop posting in a facebook thread, keep going and have to be blocked. that is: they literally do not understand social restraint and being asked nicely to stop pissing on the carpet, and will not desist until actually technologically restrained.
these are the agents of corporate sociopathy building your world!
(i know a pile of nice people at google who don’t behave like this. though still at zero acknowledgement that this shit is, like, bad.)
in which ordinary everyday people have to learn to think like fucking spies.