Question about Facebook and information 'out there' on the Web

[NJBest]

It's quite simple actually. And has nothing to do with cookies. It's fairly difficult for a website to read other website's cookies and certainly not legal... so facebook wouldn't do anything like that.

The way it works is by cross-referencing email addressbooks. Although I don't recommend this to anyone, anyone who signs up with facebook has the option of sharing their email addressbook with facebook to enable facebook to invite and/or connect to friends really quickly without having to do it manually. Your friend uploaded his/her addressbook which contained your email address.

Now your email address was crossreferenced with all the other addressbooks that were uploaded by the system to see who's addressbook your email address shows up on. It then sends this crossreferenced list to you. It's safe to assume that everyone on that list has your email address in their addressbook. It's not anything complex.

This is only added onto the same basic fact that nothing in email is ever secure and open to anyone who has a little know-how.

[Macrina]

This information helped me a lot and I'm so thankful you took the time to explain. And....I don't feel so, well. . .intruded upon, now. I mean, I don't like it particularly, but now it doesn't seem as if someone has gotten into my address book.

I have idea that the particular friend in question here is not that sophisticated about computers, and perhaps is a little naive. I'm not terribly knowledgeable but am pretty suspicious and careful. I'd never knowingly give anyone or any entity such as FB the contents of my address book.

Oh, and I looked again at all the names and pictures and there is one person completely unknown to me and unrecognizable. Don't know what to think about how that happened.

Originally Posted by NJBest

It's quite simple actually. And has nothing to do with cookies. It's fairly difficult for a website to read other website's cookies and certainly not legal... so facebook wouldn't do anything like that.

The way it works is by cross-referencing email addressbooks. Although I don't recommend this to anyone, anyone who signs up with facebook has the option of sharing their email addressbook with facebook to enable facebook to invite and/or connect to friends really quickly without having to do it manually. Your friend uploaded his/her addressbook which contained your email address.

Now your email address was crossreferenced with all the other addressbooks that were uploaded by the system to see who's addressbook your email address shows up on. It then sends this crossreferenced list to you. It's safe to assume that everyone on that list has your email address in their addressbook. It's not anything complex.

This is only added onto the same basic fact that nothing in email is ever secure and open to anyone who has a little know-how.