aha! there is the term I have been looking for all along, "shadow profile"!. I just knew there was something going on in the back ends that seems to keep me connected even when I was not even connected. Sadly, they (FB) are not the only ones who keep this information around, building up your profile with crumbs left by others. The problem is that we are interconnected and while we can be friends with people who respect our privacy and do not opt in to allow "contacts access" in all apps they install, they themselves may not have friends who think the same. Therefore, you are talking about your friends' friends allowing access to their contacts, which in turn probably exposes you as well and this probability just keeps on increasing with the number of friends/acquaintances you have. It almost seems useless to try to avoid it, but we can hopefully at least push for way to have our shadow profiles cleared completely when requested - by law.