Has this happened to you too?

[Smee]

I'm a skiptracer. I keep a phony facebook account under a fictitious name, with an unusual email that has the same name as my facebook page attached to it. It is used when I'm tracking people and find em on facebook or myspace (have the same setup there) in order to gather contact information for the people who need me to find them. Now it gets weird . . .

Lately, I have been finding a bunch of old friends WITHOUT looking for them. I open my facebook page(s) to check on marks and see if there is new information . . . and I'll find a picture of an old friend and a note saying something like "Suggested contact" or "friend" . . . or I get friend requests from people I have lost contact with over the years.

Now, if I used my real name (which they all know) --- or my forum handle (Smee) --- I could understand how they found me . . . but I use a fake name. I did a search for the name on several different sites with NO returns (prior to my using it, of course).

Is Facebook accessing my address book on my computer (two of the persons referred to above are in my Outlook and Eudora address books . . . but with old non-working emails) or comparing other contacts (maybe mail.com or hotmail or yahoo)? None of them are in the address book on the work email associated with my facebook or myspace accounts.

I don't know, but this is getting out of hand.

Happen to anyone else?

 

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[savant365]

It happened to me too. I just recently opened a facebook acct. and was getting friend requests from people I haven't seen in almost 20 years. I don't know how it works but it is a little disconcerting.

 

[Monty]

I used an online service once to find a service buddy I hadn't seen in 30 years, I used it one time several years ago and I still get emails from them telling me a classmate is looking for me. For so many bucks they will tell me who it is. I can't think if anyone I want to see that bad! This comes in on an email account I haven't given out to any commercial concern so I don't now how they found me? Monty

 

[lokkenpa]

Hey Monty,

They didn't find you. That email account was sold to a listing service and the email that you received is a marketing ploy to get whoever is at the opposite end of all the emails they bought to buy their services. Hence all the SPAM thats out there on the internet.

Phil

 

[BIG61AL]

sounds like you need to get a separate computer and don't use it for anything with your name or email or private stuff on it... i hear alot of bad things about facebook and myspace.....loads of virus's are floating around on those web pages.....get the geek squad to clean the cookies and maybe get a block on them

 

[Monty]

I try to stay away from the fad sites like twitter, facebook, etc. On my "private" account I only get 3 or 4 spams a month whereas I have a junkmail site and it had over 2000 spam messages in a three week period! I have closed out 4 other email accounts because of too much popups and spam. It is like a bunch of vultures sitting on a fence in a line just waiting to drop in on you! Monty