A system and method for identifying potential member and guest contacts while protecting member data privacy at a social networking system are disclosed. A system stores contact information for a plurality of members of a social networking system. The system receives a list of contacts of the first member. For a contact, the system accesses contact information of the contact, compares the contact information in the contact to contact information for the plurality of members, and in accordance with a determination that the contact information in the contact matches the contact information of a member of the social networking system, generates a score that the contact is not associated with malicious activity. In accordance with a determination that the generated score exceeds a predetermined score threshold, the system categorizes the contact as a suggested member connection. The system transmits member referral data to the client device for presentation.