How does someone I was at a party with last night that I haven't seen for years come up as a possible FB friend today?

Not sure but they may have looked you up on FB or they“friended” someone that is a friend of yours on FB.

My guess is that someone you know as a FB friend at the party added them as a friend and Facebook seeing that you are connected put them up as a possibility

I read an article last year that explained a similar phenomenon with ads. The algorithms know who your friends are and will sometimes show you things that they are interested in. This explains how you see ads for something you’ve discussed with friends. Perhaps something similar is happening with friend suggestions. Perhaps the algorithm know that person is in your area.

Do you have the Facebook app? Ever wondered why it needs access to Bluetooth?

Your microphone is probably on in your facebook app. Maybe location too. It either heard her name or detected you two were near each other.

I don’t do FB but I have read a lot recently about our phones syncing with each other. You can bump into a friend in a store & the signals your phone sends out & her phone sends out allows FB to see that you’re in the same location & possibly how long you 2 talked. If, by chance, you both have the FB app on your phones, they gathered enough info to know that the 2 of you were together for a reasonable length of time & assumed that you might be prospective friends on FB. YES…it is scary. Even scarier, it’s NOT just FB that does this. Google & Apple compare the same info & report it to their 3rd party vendors. They can track which of your friends that you have more influence with when it comes to buying various products. So, if you both have an iPhone or an Android then they are communicating with each other & corporations are tracking your every move & they seem to have the ability to know what you will do even before you decide to do it!!!

The first thing I do when I get a new phone is to turn off the location capability. Then when any app requests my location I get a popup request asking if I want to share my exact location or my approximate location. If I deny them any access, they deny me use of their app, so I always opt for “approximate location”. I have an Android, so I don’t know if iPhone does this particular thing or not.

Just had another thought, does FB have you give the location of all your pics when you post them??? I remember Twitter doing that & I turned that off on Twitter. I don’t post personal photos online, so it was NO loss as far as I was concerned!!!

Short of giving up our cell phones, there is a certain amount of this we will just have to accept. They know that the older, wiser generation is dying off & the younger generations think more of the convenience than the privacy.

It’s location and other metrics. I know for a fact they still use location even though they may say they don’t. Ditch the phone app.

If you allowed it, and most people do, their app has permission to see your location, and contacts. Turn those permissions off, now. There is no reason they need those.

I have all the location and contact settings on my apps, including Facebook, turned off.

I havven’t read the previous so pardon me if I am duplicating something that’s already been said. I’m pretty FB savvy. I am guessing they looked at your profile after they saw you at the party, so that tells FB (the algorithm) that this person knows you, and FB is offering them as a friend suggestion for that reason. FB is probably doing that to them, as well.