Nothing quite angers me like using an app that recommends to me people that I “should” know.
Which means that person probably allowed the app access to their contacts.
Giving an app access to your contacts is like spreading a venereal disease. Now this app knows who I am connected to, and can probably figure out why and how. That’s more information than I wanted to give them.
Don’t give apps access to your contacts. It’s not just your privacy that’s at stake.
@Mrfunkedude
There are many reasons why someone might show up as a "suggested" person to connect with. E.g.,
★ A third party has both of you in their contacts, and they shared contact info. That could be a mutual friend, a colleague, or even your doctor or therapist (I've seen this actually happen)
★ You both connected to the service from the same local network (home/work/library/etc), not necessarily at the same time
★ IP geolocation data appears to show that you both frequently connect from nearby locations
@Mrfunkedude Back when Facebook was first starting to blow up, I got a "people you might know" e-mail, and one of them was the father of somebody I used to date back when I was in high school. I get where it made the connection; there would have been several people from my old social circle who would have had both of us in their address books from back when. But it creeped me right the hell out.
@Mrfunkedude I made very sure not to give Tiktok access to my contacts, only to be shown a video with the caption "You're in their contacts" - so making the association from the other end, and then showing me their video, and telling me why! Spooky stuff
I hate to digress from your point on privacy but, parenthetically, I grew to hate the "people you may know" for a different reason.
It occurred to me that, if an app put their names in front of me, it likely also put my name in front of them, and they didn't reach out to me. So, why should I bother? No doubt, many of them think the same.
So, I'll reach out to someone if I'm looking for them, but likely won't bother based on some algorithmically-generated prompt.
@Mrfunkedude@Mikal The same boundary is crossed when you tag someone in a photo/post you upload. Granted, there are options in #facebook settings that prevent that but its not on by #default.
@Mrfunkedude@Tom_frog i use a separate contact list that contains only phone numbers i'm already speaking with in the app, which still 'gives away' things but for me is a better compromise than sharing the actual one. i also asked many friends and it seems like they don't care to protect it, which probably means at my info's uploaded anyway
@Mrfunkedude I get texts from Jay Sekulow because my right wing dupe brother installed some disinfo app that scraped his contacts. But I don't block them because I like to know what kind of disinfo they are flogging.
@Mrfunkedude As far as I’ve seen, it’s bidirectional. Like somewhere there’s a setting that says “let my friends see I am using the app,” and someone doing the same.
@Mrfunkedude@Mikal I have been guilty of sharing my contact list with social media companies in the early days before anyone was talking about #privacy issues. No more. Me sharing my data, that’s on me. Me sharing my contacts’ data, that is a line I should not have crossed. I wish I could undo all that.
I wish there were something like a phone number anonymizer like you can get with email so you can give a different random number out to everyone who asks for it. That way when idiots snitch their friends out to... waves arms in a sweeping gesture ...by uploading their address book, the scummy data miners will get a semi-useless number.
@Mrfunkedude
It would be easier to get rid of your phone number and email address and have no online presents if you don't want your data out there. Or move to an EU country. They're hardcore on data privacy.
I used to feel the same way but in an effort to relieve some of my OCD I've taken a slightly less enhanced approach. I still care about my security but not at European levels.
@That_One_Guy I know there's no such thing as 100% private data on the internet, services get hacked, etc. I just don't want to make it easy for them to have it either.
And I'd appreciate it as a common courtesy if the people that I "should" know, wouldn't make it easy for them as well.
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