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LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already
- antr 13y agoMisrepresentation can be a very serious offence. I'd like to hear LinkedIn's argument for impersonating people who don't use the platform.
- jrockway 13y agoTheir argument probably contains the following two phrases: "making money" and "that eighty-five page document you agreed to when you signed up." Less cynically, all they seem to say is "ask this person to connect with you." That doesn't imply that they're using LinkedIn.
- MichaelGG 13y agoA P/E of nearly 1000x, yet falling price? Perhaps some of them still haven't cashed out? So drive this stuff like mad to get another "good" quarter and win?
- callesgg 13y agoNot exactly news that linkedin does this...
- ekianjo 13y agoYeah, it's been a while already, and it's seriously annoying to pretend that people are using the service when they don't. I made the mistake a couple of times when trying to connect with people who appeared in my list.
- robinjfisher 13y agoI tend to keep abreast of tech-related news and had not seen anything outlining this sort of behaviour. For me, the fact that they so blatantly suggest that people have a LinkedIn account when they don't is appalling. As I noted in my post, I am not in fact that surprised though.
- jebus989 13y agoIt's like tech-news outlining that the yellow hits atop a google search are paid for. Why this is on the front page of HN I have no idea.
- imdsm 13y agoI can see how this may confuse people who aren't tech savvy, but as a tech person, I immediately recognise this as a ghost profile. When you see five or six of these amongst the actual profiles, and all of them just so happen to be people from your email, possibly who you haven't spoken to in years, you can put 1 and 1 together and know it's a trick.
- buro9 13y agoLiterally a ghost profile, the person is dead. LinkedIn must have zero empathy for what loss does to people to use such tactics that can cause distress.
- seszett 13y agoMaybe it's not common (at least while most developpers are not in their 80's) and they didn't think of it. The idea that they are evil people is more appealing, though.
- icebraining 13y agoWouldn't it cause the same distress if the deceased person really had had a LinkedIn account? Seems to me that the distress is not caused by the tactics in and of themselves.
- jhandl 13y agoHow should anybody know, from an email address alone, if the owner is alive?
- zwischenzug 13y agoWhat is the lie here?
- bambax 13y agoIt's a misrepresentation; LinkedIn lets you assume a person from your address book already has a LinkedIn account, and that you should connect with her, whereas in fact she doesn't, and your action will result in inviting her into the system. (Even more difficult to do when she's dead, although it's unclear whether LinkedIn has a way to know the living status of its real users).
- zwischenzug 13y agoI've always assumed they got it from my email account, and not from a real account. It's not a lie, they haven't even mis-represented.
- hrish2006 13y agoThey have gone too far. Disgusting.
- rudexpunx 13y agoThat is. And they call it data mining...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- adrianb 13y agoI get this all the time on the "suggested connections" page - names and email addresses extracted from my Gmail contacts, but the name is not a link to a profile (on normal suggested connections you can click on the name to see their profiles). I could easily spot those and not request to connect but it can be confusing for non-technical people. What changed recently is that these fake profiles are also listed as having "shared connections" with me which is hard to believe considering those are not Linkedin profiles at all.
- gizzlon 13y agoSome people you connected with also had them in their address book?
- adrianb 13y agoIndeed, probably it's the number of times linkedin sent them some email titled "join linkedin now".
- junto 13y agoI actually thought I had found a way to delete these contacts. You can go to Network -> Add Connections -> Manage Imported Connections. Then you can delete those contacts (10 at a time - WTF). Sadly, those deleted contacts are still showing up in my "People You May Know" page. Hence, I think it is safe to assume that LinkedIn are doing a "Facebook delete".
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago> "LinkedIn allows you to sign in to your email account and it will scan your contacts..." Hand my contacts list to a website? No thank you. When is letting a website have this a good idea, not just Linkedin, but ever?
- robinjfisher 13y agoCompletely agree. I don't actually remember doing it and it's certainly something I do not do any more. I wasn't quite so security-conscious a few years ago.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago> I don't actually remember doing it This probably indicates a dark pattern at work ( http://darkpatterns.org/ http://darkpatterns.org/ ) - it was presented as a quick, default and normal action and/or of little consequence, when actually it's quite invasive. You said that Linkedin would "scan your contacts to see if those people are on LinkedIn" and this is likely what it is presented as, but actually that information might be retained indefinitely and may be used for other purposes that are thought up later. But hey, it's just metadata, right?
- pja 13y agoThe LinkedIn Android App will periodically ask to scan your Google+ contacts for people you might know on LinkedIn, so if you've ever used that you could have leaked contacts to them that way.
- computator 13y agoAnyone reading HackerNews qualifies as technically sophisticated, so I'm curious to ask: - If you gave your email password to Linkedin or Facebook, did you change your email password immediately afterward? - Are you very confident that Linkedin and Facebook wouldn't retain your password for future use or do some other mischief? - Would you do the same thing again today?
- jsoffer 13y ago
- shakeel_mohamed 13y agoOh wow, this explains so much! LinkedIn seems to be slacking with UX across the board IMO. The contacts page is entirely unusable, I have no idea what they were thinking when the built that.
- almavi 13y agoI noticed this and don't like it. I even wrote them a complain through their Help Center and never got a response back. Sad.
- etfb 13y agoI know I'm a bitch for laughing that an article about Linked In inflating its usage figures is posted on Google+.
- robinjfisher 13y agoThe irony wasn't missed. It was just the first place that sprung to mind to write at length on the topic.
- hahainternet 13y agoSurely the fact it's posted from there indicates that the whole "its a ghost town, they're just lying" meme might be obviously false?
- panacea 13y agoWhy do you posit that?
- etfb 13y agoRemember that meme that was going around about social media and donuts? Twitter: I am eating a #donut ... Instagram: Here's a heavily post-processed picture of the donut I just ate ... Facebook: I Like donuts! ... Google+: I am a Google employee who likes donuts! It's cruel and exaggerated, but like most successful (?) jokes it contains just enough truth.
- nomadcoop 13y agoI deleted my LinkedIn account last year because I got tired of dealing with spam emails from them and people bugging me to endorse them for skills. I still get emails from LinkedIn telling me someone would like to connect. For a site which is supposed to be about building professional connections I find them horrible to deal with.
- bavcyc 13y agoI had a traditional, i.e. one that wanted salary history and other non-relevant information, recruiter tell me during a discussion that person x at linkedin says you should provide this information. This is when I realized that linkedin in not about professional relationship but about recruiting folks and that recruiters will find it most useful. As I can find a job without a recruiter, linkedin's value to me is close to zero.
- prezjordan 13y agoEndorsements seem automated to me, and I almost feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Distant cousins endorsing you for Ruby? There's no way they actually clicked that button. I feel like LinkedIn is generating those as well, as a means of getting back on their platform.
- nomadcoop 13y agoEndorsements always seemed a bit off and it wouldn't surprise me if they were automated. I had an ex-colleague repeatedly contact me about endorsing him as he had endorsed me. At that time I hadn't looked at LinkedIn in months so I had no idea why he'd endorsed me. I got the impression that the site had suggested he do it and now obviously I should return the favour. All very annoying and one of the main reasons I closed my account.
- naterator 13y agoIs there an alternative to LinkedIn in that isn't (as) ethically dubious?
- naterator 13y agoWell, in case anyone is curious: I have done a fair amount of searching, and for the most part it is a barren wasteland of alternatives. The only one I've found that looks OK is Seelio[1]. Let's see how this goes. [1] https://seelio.com https://seelio.com
- milesokeefe 13y ago> It's your story. We help you tell it. They really need to write something that tells you what the service does.
- josefresco 13y agoIs there an alternative to LinkedIn period? I'm being serious, is there another "business focused" social network out there scavenging for life?
- thetrb 13y agoThere's Xing, but it's mostly focused on Europe.
- edstock 13y agoThis is not the only underhanded practise from LinkedIn. I've had endorsements from people whom I know haven't logged into LinkedIn for years, including one from my partner who was sat next to me at the time and had even forgotten they had an old account there.
- unclebucknasty 13y agoThat's interesting. Recently, I've been receiving endorsements that seem completely random from some connections. For instance, I got one from an old college buddy (with whom I've connected, but haven't had time to catch-up) for "product management". Got another endorsement from someone else who also had no way of knowing my skillset in a particular area. Was thinking maybe they accidentally clicked on that intrusive, dark pattern of a prompt that keeps appearing atop the site. Now, I'm not so sure.
- weixiyen 13y agoReally surprised by all the comments here. This seems like a solid business decision by LinkedIn, riding the line of what a user is willing to accept and balancing it well with the potential rewards. Look at every famous company and you'll find tactics that you don't agree with, and sometimes downright illegal (Path). If you're not willing to do desperate things, to do what is necessary for user acquisition, good luck trying to build a successful business, because pure blind luck is exactly what you'll need. Stuff like this is what really separates successful businesses from the failures. It was never about some grand vision, or some belief in connecting the world. It was about figuring out how to acquire users, retain them, and monetize.
- robinjfisher 13y agoFrom their Mission and Core Values: We operate on the basis of responsiveness, openness, honesty and trust with our members, business partners, employees and stockholders. I won't quote other parts of it as it would simply hammer home the point - don't openly commit to things like this if your business practices do another. Just stay quiet.
- blumkvist 13y agoI've tried to explain this line of logic previously on HN and my experience is that the majority of the people here live in their own world. Much like people who enjoy reality TV, just more technically savvy. They babble about how FB decreases audience reach or how they hide their ad targeting instead of realizing the massive opportunity that is presented to the people who are willing to put the work. They besmirch google for giving rapgenius preferential treatment instead of taking notes and using the precedent. They revile linkedin for marketing tactics that serve them very well. In short, the crowd here is mostly nerds with a misunderstood nobility sense, refusing the see the world they are living in for what it is. Alternative in short - people here are workers, not businessmen.
- chris_wot 13y agoThey babble about how FB decreases audience reach or how they hide their ad targeting instead of realizing the massive opportunity that is presented to the people who are willing to put the work. You criticize that response like it's a bad thing. They besmirch google for giving rapgenius preferential treatment instead of taking notes and using the precedent. You say that like it's a bad thing. They revile linkedin for marketing tactics that serve them very well. You say that like it's a bad thing. In short, the crowd here is mostly nerds with a misunderstood nobility sense, refusing the see the world they are living in for what it is. You say that like it's a bad thing. Alternative in short - people here are workers, not businessmen/marketers. You say that like it's a bad thing... oh hold on. You're wrong.
- citizenconn 13y agoLinkedIn's copy is as misleading as the title of this post. LinkedIn doesn't "increase its user numbers" by doing this, i.e. they don't report these ghost accounts to wall st analysts or include them in userbase statistics. It's simply a question of disingenuous language on their site.
- robinjfisher 13y agoI'm not sure how anybody other than LinkedIn knows what they report but in any event I never said they did. This practice leads registered users to attempt to connect with people who are not using LinkedIn. In effect, LinkedIn uses its user base to spam non-users with requests to create accounts. The lie (this person has an account already) leads to a potential increase in user numbers via the emails that are triggered by the request to connect.
- iand 13y agoI've never intentionally shared my contacts with LinkedIn and yet I get shown names from my address book. One was my teenage son and I tried to connect thinking he'd signed up for some reason. Nope, he'd never even considered it. I don't know where LinkedIn got my contacts from but I suspect I must have missed a setting when I briefly installed the mobile app a few years ago. Some of the email addresses they have are out of date so that adds weight to my theory.
- robmcm 13y agoThe problem I see is that all the effort I put into protecting my contacts from being shared with linkedin, it only takes 1 clueless ex-colleague or friend to do it and my details are out there.
- reinhardt 13y agoCame here to post the same; after seeing as "people you may know" some email contacts that may not even know what LinkedIn is (such as my mom), I strongly suspect they're doing something even more shady to grab my contacts. I have never installed the mobile app.
- thescrewdriver 13y agoIt's super-creepy. All you need is someone who has previously emailed or chatted to you via e.g. gmail to give their email address and password to LinkedIn to "find contacts". The seem to go about mining a graph they have constructed using various people's email correspondence/address books, even including contacts via a nameless email addresses you never provided to LinkedIn. When I signed up I saw a bunch of people I had as contacts on a gmail account which I hardly ever use. I had NOT used said gmail account when signing up for LinkedIn (and no LinkedIn app etc.). They seemed to have somehow associated me with contacts for an email address I had told them nothing about by piecing together the contact lists of the small number of contacts I added on LinkedIn and linked the name in their address books to my unnamed gmail account. I simply don't trust them anymore.
- ben010783 13y agoI have seen this too, but I suspect that someone you contacted (or vice versa) allowed their contacts to be shared with LinkedIn. LinkedIn could then use the info from the other person to recommend contacts.
- jbb555 13y agoThat reminds me, I keep meaning to delete my linked in account. It literally is of no use to me, all it does is attract spam from useless recruitment agencies.
- wellboy 13y agoLinkedin is a horrible, horrible company and very harmful to the startup culture and ecosystem. I don't understand why Reid Hoffman, who I think is a great Angel investor is doing that to the startup community.
- kaivi 13y agoI have used my Gmail box since early beta, and most definitely, a fraction of people I have ever contacted are no longer alive. There is no way for me or for LinkedIn to determine that. They may use an aggressive strategy to get new sign-ups, but that's just their way of shoveling money. Death is natural and inevitable, and I believe that we must raise people's awareness of it. I'd say deal with it and don't ever let the reality offend you. Here is a good speculation from xkcd on a related topic: https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/ With it in mind, how valuable would a database of the deceased be in 100 years from now, if we start gathering this data today? For example, mining the internet for history on relatives would probably become a business of it's own, and as a consequence, ancestor's deeds would be much less romanticized than they are today.
- randunel 13y agoEvery website which uses facebook sign in has "list of friends" among permission requirements, and there's no way of going around that. Every product I worked on used those facebook lists to send invites and to create ghost accounts with pre-made connections :) If I ever implement yahoo (or some other) oauth, I expect the requirements to be similar, eg 'Ask for everything and create an account for everyone'. So I believe it's something that everyone does already, why would linkedin be so special? Personally, I always use e-mail signup, no OAuth, due to not being able to reject certain permissions. And I never gave my e-mail password away to LinkedIn or other services who asked for it, back in the day. Had a client of mine wanted such a feature, they probably would have asked to store it, 'just in case' :)
- loceng 13y agoI think the discomfort here is that it's not a standard practice - usually people are clicking an "Invite" action - and so the expectations of what happens creates some cognitive dissonance.
- grey-area 13y agoThis obsession with collecting users (dead or alive) reminds me of Gogol's Dead Souls - companies trading in users (who may or may not exist) in order to boost their standing and taking out huge loans on the basis of their illusory popularity. Even illusory users can have some value, just like the dead serfs in Gogol's tale, and like the dead serfs, their value is not in their existence, but in being entries on a ledger of chattels. It doesn't matter to LinkedIn whether these accounts are used or real, because they are judged on basic numbers like how many users they have. Since real money is involved and salaries and careers are riding on this number going up, they'll employ all kinds of perverse and intrusive tricks in order to inflate that number every quarter for as long as it is a measure of success.
- jebus989 13y agoIs there any evidence LinkedIn reports all members email contacts as LinkedIn users? The g+ post just displays OP's confusion at "connect" really meaning "invite" in instances where contacts don't have a LinkedIn account.
- nkozyra 13y agoNone whatsoever, the OP is making a gigantic leap based on a logical fallacy. LinkedIn claims X number of users Suggested connections by LinkedIn can be generated for users that do not even have a present LinkedIn account. Therefor, the number X must include those users.
- coldtea 13y agoYou're using logical fallacy wrong. At best this is a logical error, not a clasifiable fallacy. But it's far more likely that it's just an error of judgement, involving no formal or informal logic at all. Namely, nobody, including OP, made the syllogism you present, with the neat "therefore, X must include" etc step. They simply thought that it's very probable that this is what LinkedIn did to inflate their numbers.
- 13y ago
- mathattack 13y agoI've sometimes wondered about the folks with 0 connections. Same thing? By and large I've found the website very useful.
- rjf90 13y agoThis is deceptive at best. I've been a fan of LinkedIn as a company until now.
- abitsios 13y agoReally? That's something I haven't heard of from a technical person in a very long while (if ever). LinkedIn's public image from the last 2 years: * 2012 hack. 6.5M unsalted SHA1 password hashes leaked [1] * 2013 Acquires Pulse, forces existing users to create a LinkedIn account. Users are pissed [2] * 2013 LinkedIn Intro. In case you missed it, it was an iOS app that changed your mail settings to proxy your incoming mail through linkedin's servers in order to inject a frame with business-card-like CTAs. In the meantime, this naturally gave them instant access to all your emails. Massive privacy implications. * 2013 LinkedIn Intro, 3 days after release. Jordan Wright shows a CSS-based phishing attack: security implications as well [3] My personal experience with LinkedIn: * My profile info is available to premium users without my consent * Premium users can spam me without my consent. * "Who viewed your profile" feature. Unbelievable. * Constant contact requests from random people. I can't turn their email notifications off entirely (introductions are mandatory). EDIT: I was mistaken - <sarcasm>the process is very straightforward [5]</sarcasm> * They seem to be in the business of intentionally misleading people (2011) [4] So, personally I'm the furthest you can get from being a fan and I can't imagine what you were a fan of. They're top ranking on my shit list. [1] http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/linkedin-member-passwords-compromised/ http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/linkedin-member-password... [2] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2306932/linkedin-integrates-pulse-and-upsets-almost-everyone http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2306932/linkedin-in... [3] http://jordan-wright.github.io/blog/2013/10/26/phishing-with-linkedins-intro/ http://jordan-wright.github.io/blog/2013/10/26/phishing-with... [4] http://www.michielgaasterland.com/online-reputation/try-linkedin-premium-for-free-but-read-the-fine-print-17571/ http://www.michielgaasterland.com/online-reputation/try-link... [5] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-disable-all-of-linkedins-emails-2012-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-disable-all-of-linkedi...
- jhandl 13y agoWhy did you create a profile? If you don't want to connect with your professional network, if you don't care who looked at your profile (and are even spooked about it), if you (likely) don't use it to find people... What do you think is the purpose of having a LinkedIn account?
- grayprog 13y agoFor what it's worth, LinkedIn has different wording on this page for people who have an account and those who don't. For people who have an account already, the button says "Connect". For those who don't it says "Add to Network". I agree that even "Add to Network" may mean to "my network", which is misleading.
- nbouscal 13y agoI'm amazed nobody else has mentioned this. Everyone's talking about how this is such a dark pattern, but the interface clearly shows the distinction between the two interactions.
- blueskin_ 13y agoOne of many reasons Linkedin are never getting my email logins (not that I use a webmail service which they can scrape anyway; my saved addresses are in thunderbird).
- sergiotapia 13y agoNot surprised how shady their MO is. LinkedIn is literally the most useless site I've ever registered to. It's just a giant circlejerk that serves no real purpose be it work networking or sharing well written industry articles.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rob_mccann 13y agoI noticed this a while back - I'm fairly sure they are scanning your mobile phone contact list via their mobile app. I promptly uninstalled it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ben336 13y agoIronic title coming from a post on Google+. In all seriousness though the title is misleading. Its not increasing user numbers, its increasing perceived relevancy, and misleading users into evangelizing its platform.
- grey-area 13y agoIt's deceiving users into evangelising its platform in order to increase user numbers.
- Zigurd 13y agoThe author fatfingered the "spam my contacts and ask them to join" button. It's annoying, but it's one step less evil than the games on Facebook that spam your friends without asking.
- downandout 13y agoYour headline is extremely misleading. They are a public company and thus it is quite unlikely that they are lying about user numbers. That is a fantastic and relatively speedy way for a CEO to go to jail. What they are doing is using your contacts list to mislead you into believing that many of your contacts are already on Linkedin. Once they get you to connect with yet-to-exist accounts, then they can legitimately spam your friends saying that you want to connect with them. Interesting strategy, but it will earn them some backlash.
- aet 13y agoHere is a idea: long LinkedIn @ 194.20, short FB @ 68.90. Now, we come back in see in 5 years.
- aet 13y agoThis trade made over $4000 in the last 10 days.
- drakaal 13y agoWhat a load of bull. Let me tell you a story about John Sculley. Former CEO of Apple ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley ) I met John 4 times. He contributed to a charity that I was working with. I didn't think there was any chance he would remember me. Years went by, then I got a linkedin invite from John wanting to connect. John Sculley wants to connect with me? Really? This can't be real. I'm "famous" but I'm not that "famous" and I barely met John, no way, has to be fake. So I report it to LinkedIn. A second friend gets a similar invite, and she has never met John, but was a contractor for Apple, and at Pepsi when John was. I have her report it to Linkedin as well. Linkedin rushes around, calls John, doesn't get anything but a generic voicemail. 72 hours later they remove the account. 4 days later John's wife gets back from a trip, and checks his email and sees that linkedin has removed his account. Ooops. I have caused a legit person to have their account removed. I'm not saying LinkedIn users are all "real" but they do seem to go out of their way to have what is described in this article not happen. - http://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonwirtz http://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonwirtz
- michaelochurch 13y agoMy issue with LinkedIn is philosophical as well as practical: it's fucking dangerous. In the career game, most of us have to be spies-- careful and immensely tactical with information-- in order to have success. A lucky few are so good at what they can do that they can shoot their mouth off (like I do) and tell the truth, for the good of the world. But most people will need to reinvent their histories at least once, and LinkedIn makes it harder to do that. The upside: participation in a rather boring social network. The downside: you can never reinvent yourself, because you've put too much information out there and people can find out that you actually were only a Director, not a VP, at that job in 2007, or that you spent 4 months at a shitty startup you've since taken off your resume. But now it's almost socially unacceptable not to have a profile and actively play the game (so as to get double-digit endorsement counts in your specialties). To me, LinkedIn seems to be a way for those in the slave class to polish their own chains.
- 699 13y agoso.. you don't like it because it doesn't let you lie on your resume?
- incision 13y ago>"The downside: you can never reinvent yourself, because you've put too much information out there and people can find out that you actually were only a Director, not a VP, at that job in 2007, or that you spent 4 months at a shitty startup you've since taken off your resume." This is one of the reasons I've been thinking about killing my LinkedIn account. Profile stalking with intent to discredit seems pretty damn common. I'd always been aware of this, but only in the last five years or so have I apparently become influential enough (at work) to be a target of it.
- michaelochurch 13y agoI wrote on this earlier: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/why-i-wiped-my-linkedin-profile/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/why-i-wiped-m... Profile stalking with intent to discredit seems pretty damn common. Precisely. Take start and end dates, which are often not well defined (consulting arrangements that become full-time, severance agreements). Then there is the issue of title. Sometimes you want to inflate it, but just as often you want to deflate one (to establish trend, or reduce one's role in an unsuccessful venture) and possibly to a previous title you held at that company, which few would consider dishonest. You rarely know, at the time, how you'll want to tell a story 5 years in the future. However, to the Clueless, any whiff of inconsistency suggests poor integrity, while such people still get demolished by real unethical people and their long cons. Actual unethical people don't fudge their titles or dates or references, they extort their managers and companies into giving them accolades "legitimately". I would rather hire the guy who lied about his executive title/role on his resume than the (more common) one who actually had it but got it (as most corporate executives do) through extortion.
- smrtinsert 13y agoSeems every few months LinkedIn is busted on some nefarious activity. I don't know how it hasn't gotten a serious competitor yet, I can't stand them as a company.
- droob 13y agoBizarre headline rewrite, there.
- robinjfisher 13y agoYep. Not what I submitted it with. If they're not using email addresses to identify people you might know then what are they using?
- joshvm 13y agoPeople you searched for, people who searched for you, people you know who have those contacts in their address books and have searched for them, etc, etc. You don't explicitly need the address book and this way they suggest people that you don't have, but almost certainly know.
- mephi5t0 13y agoJust go to LinkedIn, in the top drop down menu "Network" select Add Connections. You will get a list of "imported" users. That's the users LI tricked you to give to them when they asked you to grow your network and you let them connect to your gmail or other email. They sucked in not only your address book but probably all people that ever emailed to you. In that list just go through all users and check all that don't have little LI icon next to them (no LI profile). Click Delete button and you are all set. You can just delete all of them if you want. I clicked on "allow access LI to GMail" by accident once, when they gave me some tricky pop up during my roaming on LI. Very shitty behavior IMHO
- soundoflight 13y agoI've had numerous older relatives/friends accidentally sign-up for LinkedIn because of this and not even realize they have LinkedIn.
- senthil_rajasek 13y agoI can confirm that this happened to me as well. I deleted my Linkedin profile last year. I received a connection request. I went back to Linkedin to confirm if my account was deleted. Of course, I had no account associated with my email address. I was puzzled by this and did not know the answer until now. I am going to warn people that I know to not allow Linkedin to scan their contact list. I am definitely annoyed by this.
- Istof 13y agowhile they are at it, why don't they use a fake user generator?
- greatsuccess 13y agoDown with Creepware! Down With Creeps!
- ajays 13y agoYesterday I logged in to LI after many months. Now, I've been around long enough to know not to give access to my GMail to anyone; so I've never done that. I also haven't installed the LI app on my iPhone. And yet, among the "people you may know", LI had a few email addresses that I am sure don't have LI accounts, and would never have them. So how did LI get those addresses? I was logged in to my GMail account in another tab; could it be some CSRF or such bug? I found it very creepy.
- adamconroy 13y agoNo shit Sherlock. Its been happening for years.