I had no idea your surname yet a couple of years back you showed up on my "linkedin" profile as someone I should know - Been a few bizarre instances like that with my LinkedIn account

I've had people that I've just met in person show up as someone I should know yet I don't know their email address, etc.

I've also had people with the same name as relatives of mine who are in my address book but I've only rarely communicated with via email. My address book was mined (I allowed it I think) to suggest people.

It also gave me the name of a person in the US who had the same name as someone I knew 30 years ago in Toronto who was charged with murder.

Anbody got any insight on how these suggested links come up.

It all has to do with email mining. When you upload your address book to LinkedIn for the "find people you may already know", it pulls in your WHOLE address book - and in something like gmail, that is literally anyone you have ever emailed, ever. Also, when you do that with LinkedIn, it doesn't only just remember the email address, but it also remembers the full name associated with that email address.

In addition, when you get to the "people you may know" page, LinkedIn is really sneaky about it.

Have a look at the attached image. I just pulled this up this morning. Blue is someone I went to University with, who obviously is on LinkedIn - it's got her picture, name, job title, company, etc, and then the word "Connect" underneath.

Green, however, is my retired mother-in-law. She does not have a LinkedIn account, she's never even been on LinkedIn. However, it comes up with her full name and her email address, and then "Add to Network" underneath, instead of "Connect". So if I click that, it just fires off something like "Schnooks wants to connect with you on LinkedIn! Click here to accept the invitation." It doesn't make it obvious you're actually SIGNING up, and then after that it's like "See who else you may know! Upload all your contacts!" and the cycle continues.

So LinkedIn is making all kinds of connections about people you may know based on connections that aren't already on LinkedIn. For example, let's say that Atlantic XPat and Partially Discharged also know my MIL. Even if AX doesn't upload his address book, but Partially Discharged does, LinkedIn will put together something like "Hey... Schnooks knows MIL, and Partial knows MIL, so there's a good chance that Schnooks and Partial also know each other. Partial also knows AX, so I'll suggest that maybe AX is also someone that Schnooks knows!" And so on and so forth. It's basically just a big game of six degrees of separation.

I was very amused a few months ago when "Schnooks [Maiden Name]" and a very old email address was suggested as someone I *may* know.

Nothing was 'attached' in your post...it doesn't matter. I think I understand it. Linkedin is my only real foray into social media and it creeps me out at times. I got it as LInkedin was the only place to enquire, review and apply to a job I was interested in. Within 5 minutes of signing up, a lawyer I know here in Ottawa suddenly wanted to be my friend (he is one of those 500 + mega Linkedin users).

My mother has shown up as someone I want to connect with and I'm 100% sure she doesn't have Linkein..but she is in my address book (gmail).

It has suggested old girlfriends, my next door neighbours etc.

Yeah, I forgot the attachment. Here it is.

But yes, when it comes down to it, LinkedIn is just phenomenal at making connections based on who you have in your network, who you uploaded from your address book, and the connections and contacts of those around you.

On separate but related news, Samsung Smart TVs are stalking you now too.

This forum has a long time fault (at least for me) where I click on forum tools and just as I'm about to click "mark forum as read" the drop down menu disappears and I end up clicking the name of the poster the menu initially covered - usually Siouxie or Gozit.

I hope this doesn't register as stalking.

Thanks for the LinkedIn "connections" explanation, Schnooks.

I don't actually use it much, but get all sorts of odd requests/suggestions. 6 degrees of separation would explain that.

Just checked my Linkedin and had another strange connection. The sister of one of my 80 or so contacts. I have seen her twice (1989 and 1997), I don't have her email and the only connection would be through her brother (my Linkedin Contact). She does not show up as one of his contacts.

I've just been stalked! Perhaps by someone looking for a beach chair.

I suppose now I'm going to be asked if I know half the population of Newfoundland.

She's not his contact, but if he ever used LinkedIn's "find people I may know using my email address" thingie, then her email would be there that way, so it would just suggest it as someone you may know.

I just went through my list again. I'd say about 1/3 are people I know from some point in my life - classmate in uni, friend of a friend, whatever. 1/3 are "invite x to join LinkedIn!" type contacts, the majority of which are using waaaaay outdated emails (browneyedgirl @ hotmail . com, for example, not an actual address, but an example of the type - i.e., not CURRENT address), and the remaining 1/3 I have no idea who they are. However I can see how LinkedIn might think I do, particularly the ones that have shared connections. (you can see how many shared connections there are by looking at the number in the bottom right corner of the profile picture.)

It uses the email account you signed up with and it's history and contacts. It runs the history against it's existing data using predictive algorithms.

The idea, more for them, is that when you try and add some of these people if they are not on LinkedIn it can generate an email and invite them thus expanding the network.

I get that, I'm just pointing out that none of the emails were current.

I reckon the beach chair line was a bait to see who would search for you on Linked In. Ok, I was that soldier, but then we have met IRL and you know my secret identity already.

If you search on LI for someone and actually click onto their profile you get picked up in the "people who are looking at your profile" record for that profile. That is unless you've got a premium LI account which can afford you some anonymity if you so choose. LI is therefore a pretty silly place to stalk someone unless you don't mind them knowing that you are doing so! (Actually if you log out of LI and then search and click on someone's page, they don't get the record of who looked at it. That's what you do if you are a proper stalker. Or so I've heard.)

LinkedIn has some weird "security" settings.

Last week I was trying to stalk find someone that I haven't spoken to in YEARS. I'd googled their name, let's say it was Joe Smith... the first link was for LinkedIn. I clicked it, then LinkedIn just gave me the page "Joe S. Upgrade to see full name and profile!" and I couldn't see any of Joe's profile. Boo. I tried a few ways to get around it, but gave up.

A few hours later, I decided to try something else - searched for him using LinkedIn's normal search function instead of Google, and bam, full profile, right up in front of me, including the full name.

Genius, LinkedIn. Well done.

You got me bang to rights, guvnor.