4 ms·
This is essentially a mitm attack. I am amazed that a company the size of LinkedIn would think that this is in any way appropriate. These are the tricks of spam
by poxrud 13y ago
This is essentially a mitm attack. I am amazed that a company the size of LinkedIn would think that this is in any way appropriate. These are the tricks of spammers and cyber criminals. This is what LinkedIn has become.
Will customers be explicitly told that all of their emails will be going through and stored on LinkedIn servers? I doubt it. I do envision a dialog box along the lines of "Click Here to make your experience better". Sadly people will click without realizing the implications.
- MPetitt 13y agoBut you do have to take into account the context of what they are doing. Yes on a technical scale it is similar to a mitm attack, and yes in theory they do have access to your email content, but I don't think that by using an interesting trick to add a useful feature should put them in the same category as sleazy hackers secretly trying to steal your credit cards and such.
- jonhohle 13y agoDoes it matter? They are purposefully inserting themselves into a stream of information which they largely have no business being a party to. If (when?) this proxy service is compromised are they willing to be accountable for any information which leaks? I can't imagine wanting to even take on this risk (maybe I'm too conservative). Edit: I just want to add - yes, it's interesting. Yes, it's sleazy.
- bluetshirt 13y ago> They are purposefully inserting themselves into a stream of information to implement a feature that's impossible to do any other way. They have a justification for doing this.
- rhizome 13y agoThere is a saying you may have heard before, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Intent doesn't matter at all, because someone will inevitably figure out a) how, and b) why to take advantage of it for nefarious purposes.
- sixothree 13y agoWasn't linkedin the defendant in a class action lawsuit about them using address books improperly?
- baddox 13y agoThe "attack" part of "man in the middle attack" refers to the fact that it is done secretly and generally with ill intentions. LinkedIn is not being secretive (and we can speculate about their intentions). If everything that's in the middle of something is a man in the middle attack, then that would include your home router.
- poxrud 13y agoI do think LinkedIn has ill intentions. In my opinion, their intentions are to collect, analyze, and ultimately profit from their user's email data. All under the guise of offering some marginal benefit.
- freehunter 13y agoI work in enterprise information security, and my team agreed upon hearing this news that if this was used on our email system, we would consider it a MITM attack. Whether or not the end user opted in, the corporation did not. So, in the context of use in environments where your email address is not fully owned by you, attack would be a valid word. Otherwise, I agree that it's a MITM but not an attack.
- tedunangst 13y agoIs your corporation going to fire the users who use this? If not, why not? They are aiding and abetting an outside attacker.