If someone searches for your profile on Facebook and views it, you will inevitably see that person as a "people you might know" suggestion on your newsfeed. I knew a long lost cousin had looked me up this way. I've also seen clients, ex employees etc - none of whom I've ever had links with via my Facebook email or in Facebook itself. Why would FB suggest them as people I know? Because they've done a search for me, and FB uses little snippets of info like this to piece together a network of potential contacts for everyone. It then sets about trying to hook you up with all of these potential contacts by suggesting them to you.

Creepy? Yes, but also quite interesting when you sift through those suggested contacts. It also makes me think twice about "checking out" the profiles of people whom I'd rather they didn't know I'd looked at them (ex girlfriends from years ago I'm curious about etc).

So that's how it works, uh? 
 
Oh well, nothing to hide here anyway. :)
 
Privacy on the internet is as much of an illusion as hoping to discuss a private matter with a friend on the subway at rush hour and to keep it absolutely secret. You may not intend it to be heard, you may take precautions, but in the end, "online" is a public place... 

Just another reason I don't use Feckbook.

craigb
Just another reason I don't use Feckbook.

Actually, one needn't worry too much about privacy on Facebook - the average audience for posts has dropped by almost 75% in the last years and the last revisions of the timeline made it increasingly difficult to get to the information you want to see.
 
The stuff you post will only get more visibility if more people push that "like" button - and since people can't "like" what they don't see...
 
The new algorithms make it so that you only see the pages and people you interact with the more regularly in your newsfeed - which obviously is a vicious circle. There are literally hundreds of pages which I like and which I am technically "following" but at some point they just vanish from my newsfeed.
 
One day, you notice you haven't heard from them in months. You decide to look for their page - and funnily enough, search engine won't even bring those pages you like at the top of the suggestion list. When you finally manage to get to the page, you realize that they've posted updates regularly, but the algorithm has decided to hide it from you...

That reminds me. I looked up one of my high school sweethearts on FB. It showed a picture of her at 16. Wow. She was beautiful! All it showed of her now was a couple of flowers and a horse. 

bayoubill
That reminds me. I looked up one of my high school sweethearts on FB. It showed a picture of her at 16. Wow. She was beautiful! All it showed of her now was a couple of flowers and a horse. 

That's 'cos the horse is better looking these days. Either that or it ain't a horse ! ;)

I looked up a girl from school whom I hadn't seen since I was 10, when she was the object of desire of every boy within a 20 mile radius. I changed schools and never saw her again. Well I recently found her on Facebook and now she's married to a 300lb bouncer with a face like a bulldog licking vinegar off a nettle, and she's the spitting double of Pat Butcher from the British TV show Eastenders. I was staggered.

 
 
 
I've seen pics of a bunch of girls I went out with and dated back in the days - in some cases, I really wished things had worked out back then. Seing them after so many years, I am glad things turned out the way they did and it only reinforces my feeling that I am the luckiest bastard on the planet. :P

I am so thin I don't have a profile. Anyway, that is what class re-unions are for.
 

spacealf
I am so thin I don't have a profile. Anyway, that is what class re-unions are for.
 

And I never had class reunion. :)
 
Anyway, I'd much rather see those people offline than in real life in 99,99% of the cases.