Interesting information leak from facebook

The other day I signed into facebook and came across something very interesting. I noticed an update on my newsfeed from someone I had sent a friend request to. Having seen this I was under the impression that they had accepted my friend request, consequently I clicked on their profile and saw that it said awaiting friend confirmation. This is significant and may have some forensic/ investigative value because it seems to tell us that depending on what privacy settings a person has, if they don't act on a friend request, you can still get regular updates on some of their information on your newsfeed. This could potentially be used to track when a person changes, or updates their pictures, posts status updates or other information, without actually having to go to their profile page on a regular basis and without being part of their friendship group on facebook.