She thinks Facebook's friend-finding algorithm was able to link up her patients because they all have her number in their phones

psychiatrist first became aware of this problem when Facebook had begun recommending her own patients to her as potential friends

Facebook's mission, as defined by its founder Mark Zuckerberg, has always been to 'connect the world', but now it seems the social media giant has gotten too good at doing just that.

Every Facebook user is familiar with the 'People You May Know' section of the site, which lists people with whom you have friends in common, or in whose photos you've been tagged.

But according to reporting by Fusion.net, Facebook seemingly takes other factors into account when suggesting whom you should friend, including phone contacts, and possibly geographical proximity.

Privacy fail: A psychiatrist says Facebook has outed her patients to one another by recommending them as potential friends on the app

According to Fusion writer Kashmir Hill, she has been contacted recently by a psychiatrist named Lisa who discovered that Facebook had started recommending her own patients as potential friends.

The mental health professional, who lives in a small town, was surprised and troubled by this development, since she was an infrequent Facebook user and had not granted the app access to her phone contacts.

However, upon reviewing her Facebook profile, Lisa realized that she had shared her phone own number on the social media site.

The matter took a more disturbing turn when one of her patients, a snowboarder in his 30s, came to her saying that he had begun getting recommendations to 'friend' septuagenarians with whom he had nothing in common, and whom he never met.

The young man quickly came to the realization that the elderly strangers the app was suggesting to him as potential friends must have been some of Lisa’s other patients.

Sometime later, another patient of Lisa’s got a friend suggestion on Facebook for a person she recognized from a chance encounter in the office’s elevator.

Now the woman had another patient’s full name and other personal information listed on his social media profile.

‘It’s a massive privacy fail,’ said Lisa, who asked Fusion not to use her real name.

‘I have patients with HIV, people that have attempted suicide and women in coercive and violent relationships.’

It is believed that Facebook's friend-finding algorithm linked up the psychiatrist's patients because they all had her phone number in their phones

As a precaution, the psychiatrist and her colleagues in the medical community now urge their patients not go on Facebook while at the office, or even leave their phones at home when going for an appointment.

However, Facebook says its friend-finding algorithm does not rely on geographic proximity.

An alternative theory is that Lisa's patients began popping up on each other's Facebook pages because they have her phone number in their own phones, which the social network’s algorithm then possibly used to link them up.