unknownj

I think their mechanism uses various criteria:
* it includes people who have searched your name in the past
* friends of friends (though that one is fairly obvious)
* people who have the same contact information as you (this one i know because there's a really stupid lady out there who keeps mis-typing her phone number and putting my number instead of hers)
* the above point leads me to think that they may go deeper and use any number of commonalities in a user's profile to identify "people you may know"

It really is a stalker's wonderland.

This seems to happen to a lot of people. I kind of wish I could have some freaky suggestion waiting for me someday.

ugh, I hate that feature. facebook suggests lots of people from both my alma maters, and I either don't know them or would rather not be in touch with them. If I wanted to friend people from undergrad, I would have done so already.

Also annoying are some people from high school who consistently try to friend me (I bet I appear in their possible friends thing). Again, if I wanted to friend you, I would have. Move on.

Yes, it's rather creeptastic. Mine keeps suggesting my mother-in-law, though I have long since removed my ex from my list.

I haven't had any creepy suggestions. :(

I don't get it. I never get eery "how did you know?!" recomendations (and I think facebook might use friends of friends of friends searches for that one) but I do get random recomendations for people I've heard of, share no common interests/networks/locations with, and who (assumably) have never heard of me. People living half way across the continent!