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> massively privacy violating service And that's saying it gently. Not sure if they're still doing it, but the way they were harvesting e-mails and then using
by tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
> massively privacy violating service
And that's saying it gently.
Not sure if they're still doing it, but the way they were harvesting e-mails and then using them to spam the harvested contacts, they were no better than any other phishing site.
For people who use the same password on LinkedIn and their e-mail account, it was extremely easy to accidentally "consent" to this, and I've seen many an apology to the spam victims from someone who accidentally gave access. And they would spam everyone multiple times, with no way for the recipients to stop it. (They paid a $13M settlement for this; gladly, I assume).
It still boggles my mind that e-mail providers didn't both block LinkedIn's IPs from accessing contacts and spam-can everything from their mail servers.
- g_p 6y agoAgreed - I think they stopped doing this, but I am still tempted to make a GDPR complaint on the basis I have never consented to receiving contact from them. Looking back at my email archives, I was still getting "X's invite is awaiting your response" emails in October 2018, after GDPR began. Perhaps I am taking an overly strict view here, but given my email address is my personal data, no amount of consent (or indeed waivers/warrants from users that they have my consent, which LinkedIn has no genuine reason to believe true) can grant them permission to store and process my personal data. It seems nonetheless unavoidable for LinkedIn to have carried out the process of linking my email to the person that sent the (unsolicited) request. This kind of behaviour is really rather scummy. I hope that invite spam could be a separate case on the basis of a GDPR violation, rather than the "accidentally going into people's email and getting their contacts" (as incredulous as it is to even write this!)