Facebook Friend Finder - Privacy Issues

So here's what happened today...

I logged on to Facebook and in the top right corner where those auto-suggestions are generated, I found the name of this person I had met an year ago in German class. I went to his profile and found that we had no mutual friends. He's new on Facebook, how in the world did Facebook know that he might be my friend.

The only way I could think of was that this dude's email ID is in my email provider's address book. And when I had used the Facebook Friend Finder feature, I had given Facebook access to my address book so that it could tell me which of my friends were already in there.

Let's say that again.. "so that it could tell me which of my friends were already in there".. the assumption inherent here is that Facebook is gonna look at my address book, compare it with its database, give me a list of friends it found, and throw my address book data away. Just like e-commerce sites are supposed to throw credit card data away. I know this is no way as sensitive as credit cards but it's a good indication of how we're unconsciously letting our data move between sites without even realizing it.

The Facebook site says it doesn't store passwords, I went through the documentation and it's not unambiguously clear that they're storing the info they retrieve from my email cilent in their system. There is an almost impossible to find link that allows you to ask Facebook to remove that data.

Here's how you get to it after you hit Friends -> Friends Finder on the top nav:







I clicked the 'Remove' button.