Friday, June 12, 2009

Facebook... you've crossed the line.

So I’m just minding my own business, checking my Facebook and what do I suddenly see to the right of my screen? The name of a less then friendly ex staring back at me from the “Suggestions” for friends column. Now I know how these things go, I know that in the past people who attended my high school or college, or know my friends might pop up on here and I honestly thought that was creepy enough. But this ex, I have no connections to this person whatsoever, we have not mutual friends, no mutual school attendance and no mutual interests. Hell, we don’t even live in the same state. So how, creepy lords at Facebook, did you make this crazy 5 year old “connection”?

One quick Google search later and I have my answer.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/06/12/facebook-now-suggesting-friends-found-in-imported-contact-lists/#comments

Evidently, at some point I allowed Facebook to look through my address book for friends who might also be on Facebook. I assume this was when I just started out, although I don’t honestly remember it.

It seems that ever since that time, Facebook has been harboring that information, just waiting around for these people from my past to join Facebook and then suggest that I be friends with them. Although I appreciate the sentiment Facebook, I find you keeping my address book handy for all these years a little unsettling. It’s like a creepy stalker keeping a list of all the people I’ve ever talked to or something.

And even creepier? I think the stalker parallel is very appropriate since clearly you have been keeping an eye on my e-mail list all along, not just the list you saw when I first entered that information. I know for a fact that I didn’t start e-mailing my Pilates studio (who also showed up in my “Suggestions” this week) until WELL after I signed up for Facebook. So that is a new e-mail address, and evidence that although you mentioned in that nice page when I signed up that you wouldn’t be saving my e-mail password, you evidently did.

I like facebook, I like learning about what everyone else is up to, but I don't know if I appreciate Facebook pushing everyone in my e-mail address book on me. Just because I e-mailed you once doesn't really make you my "Friend" does it? I guess in Facebook land, it should.