Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

I have to give it to FB - it's impressive how does their personal information collection and inference work. I was recently called by their recruiter - despite me being off FB for a few years, with inactive LinkedIn profile and keeping my current career info offline, they were perfectly informed what I am up to. Google messaged me as well. It's pretty amazing they could figure it out, even if I didn't really hide anything, just wasn't updating my status anywhere for quite a while nor talking to my acquaintances that could leak it through social engineering.

View on HN

Not refuting your theory, but in all probability, you (like most others in the industry) have friends ("friends"?) that simply relay info to recruiters from these two companies. Poaching is often done that way.

Also, at least in my case, both Google and Facebook periodically reach out, years after our last formal interaction.

Had a recruiter working for one of my clients for a few years. They later left the company and joined the competition. Recruiter's past "success stories" all got contacted, not a week after.

They specifically had info only my accountant had and I wasn't disclosing it to anyone outside closest family. They also contacted me within 10 minutes of each other which made it even more unusual. I guess somewhere in some system some of my info appeared and triggered both of them.

Your employment history isn't private information. It's sold by data brokers to companies for recruiting.

But who sells it to the data brokers?

Payroll companies (ADP etc)

Background check companies that do employment reference verification checks for employers

All three credit reporting companies have employment history products. So for example if your rental application includes your current and/or past employers, those will end up permanently with the credit reporting agency.

Plus others. Basically anyone that gets your employment info will sell it since as far as I'm aware it is not protected in the same way your credit history is.

>> they were perfectly informed what I am up to

Can you elaborate? If not with details then in general terms, i.e. what I had for breakfast last week, etc...

>informed what I am up to. Google messaged me as well.

Your recruiter is leaking your data, same happens in the UK. If you pass 3rd stage interview in Google, suddenly you get calls from Oracle, IBM, Amazon, MS and more. I never asked them to call me, never applied there, they just "somehow now" and want to rush with interviews with you.

That’s super interesting. Could you elaborate what kind of information they had? Any idea how they managed to stay up to date?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com