Opting out of a social network doesn't sound possible, unless you can somehow maintain separate e-mail and phone numbers for each of your contacts, something that would be almost impossible to do, or if you managed to find a circle of friends that understands the privacy implications of social networks, something that is equally unlikely.<p>Internet social networks are like small town social networks where everyone knows who is doing what to whom, except that instead of a few hundred locals who like to gossip, the community is millions, and the motive is monitization.
Opting out in that manner (not <i>existing</i> as far as Facebook is concerned), is effectively flat-out impossible. If other people know you exist, and a HUGE amount of people are on a website, uploading all their info, you can't prevent it. It's entirely out of your control.<p>As to his fear that they're associating friends by email addresses uploaded, my personal experience implies that they either don't, or it factors in very lightly. A few friends who I email with pretty regularly, and are on Facebook, <i>and</i> uploaded their email lists (which I am most certainly on) didn't come up as possible-friends <i>ever</i>. It seems to be entirely friend-of-a-friend based, and as they were in an entirely separate circle of friends, they never came up. I never bothered adding them, because we already contacted each other as needed through email / IM.<p>The friends it <i>did</i> suggest to me, though, were almost universally friends of my friends, typically with several connections, but I seriously doubt they ever had my email (or many of the in-between links, if any).
A friend had a similar experience, except that he didn't even try to sign up for Facebook. His email is first name + last name. @ gmail and apparently someone signed up with his email on accident. After that my friend started getting lots of automatic friend requests from people he knew. He was able get the password sent to him, since it was his email afterall, and canceled the account. Like the OP he was pretty freaked out about how much Facebook seemed to know based solely on his email.
The email contact importer thing on facebook is something that many people in my social circle thought was really neat because it made finding their friends so easy. I'll admit, that I used it when I first joined facebook a few years back.<p>In retrospect I wish I hadn't used it, as this article mentions, I not only gave away pieces of my personal information, I gave away personal information that didn't even belong to me, it belonged to my contacts. Now, it seems quite dubious that facebook has the gall to ask for my email password. It is true that hindsight it 20/20.
Eben Moglen's talk 'Freedom in the Cloud' from last Friday might be relevant in this context:
<a href="http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=1338" rel="nofollow">http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=1338</a>
>Where do we draw the line between my right to control my data, and the right of other people to exchange information about me?<p>When you make your data public, you no longer have a right to control it. The alternative is that by making your data public, you impose a burden of secrecy on those who hear you talking.<p>It's mildly creepy that facebook knows so much about you, but it's not a particularly new phenomenon. ("You must be Danny, Jo talks about you all the time! Tell me, did you really...") Facebook just hears more gossip than any one person did in the past.
How much privacy does one share with his housemates/spouse/siblings? Pretty much nothing. Facebook is one big house where everyone gets to know about each other's activities. Though such sharing might be unacceptable to certain people, most people (especially college under graduates and younger) love it. So this is probably the future!<p>At the same time, it must be remembered that facebook never forces anyone to share their personal information. You do have control over who sees what.
We're moving from an information-poor world to an information-rich one. There is really no way to stop the loss of privacy. The draconian legislation required would, themselves, create a tremendous loss of privacy.<p>We've moved from file sharing "piracy" to personal information "piracy." And, ultimately, neither is preventable.
The irony of this article is the only way for him to get the control he wants is to be on Facebook and monitor what is put up about him. Only then will he be able to see what he doesn't approve of and ask those people to not put them up.