TBH, the Internet is getting scarier.

Pretty much the reason why I don't post stuff on FB page, or link anything to anything else. Every account gets their own email address.

damn, every account get's it's own email address must be kindof insane to keep track of after a bit.

damn, every account get's it's own email address must be kindof insane to keep track of after a bit

My girlfriend manages this by having her own domain name with an unlimited number of email accounts associated with it. So her FB email address is facebook@hername.com, her myspace email address is myspace@hername.com, etc.

just seems like a bit overkill, although thinking about it, you'd essentially be able to discover what site's are selling your email to advertiser's.

My GD.net profile page doesn't list my email, except to people logged in as moderators... but one day I got a personalized email from a google HR representative asking me if I'd like to apply for a job, and they referenced posts that I'd made on this board!

They definitely know a lot about everyone.

On topic, but regarding Facebook --
Maybe 5 years ago, I signed up to Facebook with a fake account in a fake name ("Bill"), with an old email (also made under the same fake name, which I use for things that might spam me), because I was going to an event that was being organized on there.
Recently, Facebook has started sending emails to this address trying to entice me to start using this long-idle account. The scary part is, most of these emails are in the form of "Hey Bill, do you know *person*, *person* or *person*?", and I shit you not, about 50% of the people it lists I've never heard of, but the other 50% are either high-school friends, university friends, colleagues (past and present -- from every different job I've ever had), current close friends or even family.
I've not logged into that account for years, and somehow, it has a really good idea of the institutions and workplaces that I've attended!

thinking about it, you'd essentially be able to discover what site's are selling your email to advertiser's.

For anyone with gmail, I'd recommend you do the same thing to catch out people who on-sell emails.
You can add "+anything" to the end of your email address, and it still goes to the same gmail account.
e.g. if you're "bill@gmail.com", you can sign up to gd.net with "bill+gdnet@gmail.com" and you'll know they've on-sold your details if you get spam to that address

My GD.net profile page doesn't list my email, except to people logged in as moderators... but one day I got a personalized email from a google HR representative asking me if I'd like to apply for a job, and they referenced posts that I'd made on this board!

They definitely know a lot about everyone.

On topic, but regarding Facebook --
Maybe 5 years ago, I signed up to Facebook with a fake account in a fake name ("Bill"), with an old email (also made under the same fake name, which I use for things that might spam me), because I was going to an event that was being organized on there.
Recently, Facebook has started sending emails to this address trying to entice me to start using this long-idle account. The scary part is, most of these emails are in the form of "Hey Bill, do you know *person*, *person* or *person*?", and I shit you not, about 50% of the people it lists I've never heard of, but the other 50% are either high-school friends, university friends, colleagues (past and present -- from every different job I've ever had), current close friends or even family.
I've not logged into that account for years, and somehow, it has a really good idea of the institutions and workplaces that I've attended!

thinking about it, you'd essentially be able to discover what site's are selling your email to advertiser's.

For anyone with gmail, I'd recommend you do the same thing to catch out people who on-sell emails.
You can add "+anything" to the end of your email address, and it still goes to the same gmail account.
e.g. if you're "bill@gmail.com", you can sign up to gd.net with "bill+gdnet@gmail.com" and you'll know they've on-sold your details if you get spam to that address

your story is quite scary, my dad asked me the same question when he first started using facebook, and the only response i could give him was that it might be linking people who had tried to search for him in the past, although reading that you used fake names, and it still discovered your real friends is just....scary....

also, that tid-bit with adding + to gmail emails is actually handy to know, thanks=-)

Fact: If you're logged into your Google account, google can automaticly detect what pages you view if that page contains a +1. (Facebook does the same thing with 'Like'). Poor theory: Maybe they somehow detect you 'submitting' the text in some way?

I wonder, does this also happen for sites with Google Analytics? This seems to be like 99.99% of sites on the internet right now, it's practically impossible to find a site that doesn't have that.

This is serious shit. A run a search on myself a few times per year but so far I never found anything even remotely as scary as that!

I had the same problem with Facebook, I created a brand new account a few days ago due to some personal life requirements (I deleted my old one like years ago) and the thing instantly came up with lots of people I knew, including people I talk to on Skype only. It's ridiculous.