You have friends or past employers in common.

I signed up for LinkedIn because I was doing some research on someone for work and wanted to check out a result on LinkedIn from Google for the person. Now, I keep getting messages saying various strangers know me. It freaks me out a bit that, while I don't know them from Adam, we must have some acquaintances in common. Freaks me out, but is also kind of cool.

Ceiling cat is watching you communicate.

Buuuuut ... one person is a client of mine. In a completely different field. Who contacted me about a hugely confidential matter. I'm not aware of any common friends or coworkers, although I imagine there must be some way we're connected.

Another person is a really good friend of a friend of mine, but my friend is not on LinkedIn and I otherwise do not cross paths with this person.

Another person is a mediator I used years ago, and hundreds of miles away.

I'm sure there's a reason but ...

Another person is my ex downstairs neighbor, whom I never liked much. It kind of seems as though ceiling cat came into my computer, grabbed six random email addresses from the past 10 years, and then posted those people.

I looked at that linked in thingie, and they want your real name and stuff... SCARY! I hate real life. I want to stay in my fantasy world.

"one person is a client of mine. In a completely different field. Who contacted me about a hugely confidential matter." Claudia_SF if your client has you in his or her email then that would account for your contact on linked-in.

Yeah, the connections were probably there all along - when you joined up, it probably searched its database for people with your e-mail address listed. Doesn't FaceBook do something similar - searching your gmail contacts for any matches with people who are also on FaceBook?

It's a connected world, baby and getting more so every day.

That happened to me with a girl I went on a few dates with, but otherwise had no connection to. We didn't have any employers in common, nor did we share any coworkers once, twice, or thrice removed. But all the same, LinkedIn said "You might know this person" so I can only assume that she dumped her contact list into it. It still freaked me out, though.

Ah, that makes sense. The people I was surprised to see are not in my email address book (plus I never dumped mine), but maybe I'm in theirs.

I find that teh way linkedin and facebook and all those other fancy sites do the "let me log in to your google/hotmail/email account" thing to bee deeply disturbing.

But people seem to totally go for it every time. Perhaps I shall make my site ask the same question at signup "hey can I log into your gmail? ktx!" I'd TOTALLY abuse that power.

If that person's email address is in your email program, and you let linkedin troll your email program, that person shows up in that sidebar. It doesn't always work, of course, because sometimes people use alternate email addresses. As cmonkey points out, it works in reverse, too, if they've contact-dumped, it thinks you know them.

I did find an old friend in Linkedin, though, it was cool.