Twitter is Creepy

[glo]

So I'm in the process of a pretty massive WordPress/forum install/social media footprint project (manually setting up through a web host, this is relevant), and just now I got around to creating the social accounts and linking API keys and the such. Here's how I set up my email / external accounts such as Disqus, twitter, FB and so on:

Site admin email setup through my host, only used for new registration emails, password recovery, etc

Generic freshly created outlook.com email, no contacts. This is tied to pretty much everything. I have the Facebook page, twitter account and Disqus moderation all tied to it. I used my own name when registering all of these, and will swap out both the email and my name once the project is complete. You pretty much have to use your own credentials and phone number to set up developer stuff, just makes it a lot easier in the short term.

Anyway, on to the creepiness. At no point was my personal email ever tied to anything. It's also worth mentioning that I created a dummy account for the Facebook page. Yet somehow, after setting up social media auto posting from the main site and testing it out, Twitter managed to suggest a massive amount of people that I know in real life. Even a random person I had played WoW with (who's also on my FB) years ago.

How?! Short of some cookie madness, I don't get it. Nothing whatsoever is tied to any person email, facebook, twitter, etc. Everything was proxied through fresh accounts.

[glo]

Oh, forgot to mention that I wasn't at my house at the time either. Just setting it up from work via their provider. I never use my phone on their wifi either.

[tielknight]

The internet knows who you are before even meeting you for the first time.

They probably use your name and general location to look up anything and everything they can find on you(lots of cross-referencing names and potential names and whatnot) and give you a list in return after digging up your dead relatives to find out your dirty little secrets.

[Cyanotical]

probably a combo of cookies and ip address tracking, but things do get creepy when you start looking into big data and the accompanying meta data

[glo]

Yeah, I figured IP tracking would make sense, just thought it would be tied to my own or others that I've used to log into certain sites.

Never before used IP location data + me not even having a personal twitter account = them using my name and IP location to cross reference with people on facebook with similar names and locations. Creepy.

[Teye]

Welcome to the internet.

[Deleted]

This is not IP tracing or anything like that.

They simply read your cookies.

[Charge me Doctor]

When you signed for facebook, you gave them right to sell all some info on your page to other companies, including you name, location, where you work and all this public stuff. Twitter could just buy database, and they've got all info about you.

But after rereading your post: yeah, it's probably cookies

[2legit2quit]

Someone creates a social media site, that is free to use, and becomes worth billions! I wonder how that happens? Oh wait. I just got an advert telling me how that happens. You sly google-analytics.com.

[glo]

This is not IP tracing or anything like that.

They simply read your cookies.

Would be impressive considering that I don't use work machines for social media. I'd be out of a job.

[Last Starfighter]

Would be impressive considering that I don't use work machines for social media. I'd be out of a job.

"Twitter managed to suggest a massive amount of people that I know in real life.". There ya go. It wasn't suggesting nobody your friends. It was suggesting YOU your friends. You were logged into your twitter.

[glo]

"Twitter managed to suggest a massive amount of people that I know in real life.". There ya go. It wasn't suggesting nobody your friends. It was suggesting YOU your friends. You were logged into your twitter.

I suggest you look over my original post again. I don't have a twitter account.

[Tehterokkar]

Same thing for me, I don't really use my Twitter account much, but every time it recommends people I actually know(or people I did know like 4-5 years ago). I don't even have a Facebook account or other Social media.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Same thing for me, I don't really use my Twitter account much, but every time it recommends people I actually know(or people I did know like 4-5 years ago). I don't even have a Facebook account or other Social media.

Are you tagged in any photographs or otherwise mentioned on friends' Facebook pages?

[Denpepe]

Slightly off topic, but as smart as people claim that certain sites and services are, whenever I accidentaly get on FB (I don't have an account) it's in French, even though I never visit anything French, and my windows is in Dutch; same for the EA otigin store, keeps starting in French and I manually have to change to dutch, this is pretty basic stuff they can't even get right