7 ms·

LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

221 points by salemh 12y ago

001sky 12y ago
While Koh agreed to throw out claims based on federal wiretap and stored communications claims, she said LinkedIn may have violated California’s right of publicity, which protects against the appropriation of someone’s name or likeness, without their consent, for commercial purposes.
ciderpunx 12y ago
Hope that LinkedIn lose that suit. I had tonnes of people with me in their address book bombarding me with LinkedIn invitations - it'd make me feel better about that.
bhhaskin 12y ago
Its about time LinkedIn got call on this. They have been doing this for years.
waterfowl 12y ago
Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't imagine any legitimate "superstars" actually respond to these folks. Edit: the really awkward thing is when it starts recommending you one night stands from years ago just because you may have at some point exchanged an email.
- nilkn 12y ago
  > I can't imagine any legitimate "superstars" actually respond to these folks. Well, of course not. The goal isn't to get those people. It's to get the people who aren't that good but are just good enough and therefore are actually awed by having someone contact them and refer to them as an extreme cutting edge web 2.0 ninja.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Facebook does the exact same thing. I keep getting their spam and I don't have an account so they pester me to sign up. Incredible that such big companies get away with this. Even google has joined the legion of spammers with their new 'g+ linkdrive'.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  While I have certainly had my share of clueless recruiters contact me through LinkedIn, I have also had a good number of decent contacts that either didn't pan out or which I just wasn't interested in. I don't get nearly the deluge of contacts that some people here say they get, though.
  - waterfowl 12y ago
    I'm pretty early career(graduated in 2012) and even I get harassed on the regular. Maybe they bother younger people more because they think we're less expensive(which is generally true) but the only "legit" linkedin recruiters I ever heard from seemed like Google/FB/Palantir/etc"spam every graduating CS kid in x region" as an invitation to apply rather than a normal "recruiting for a specific opening" type thing. Maybe I just have a shitty linkedin(but it does say plz no recruiters on it)
    - xauronx 12y ago
      I think there's something at play with when you're "looking". I didn't update anything to specifically say that I was in the market for a new job, but when I was, I was receiving a shitload of emails. Now that I switched jobs and I'm happily employed for about a year I only get like one every couple weeks. Not sure what kind of algorithm they use but it's pretty good.
      - seestheday 12y ago
        I notice that whenever I update my profile I tend to get a huge increase in emails.
    - larrys 12y ago
      You probably should develop a different attitude for you own benefit. You are just starting out and the shit recruiter today may very well progress in their career (perhaps they are even a newbie to recruiting) and you may need them down the road. Even if annoying, no sense to burn bridges. You can always be polite and keep the door open. Your job prospects may be good today but not in 5 or 10 years. As far as "harassed" welcome to the world of outbound selling. If you were out of a job and were sending out resumes and contacting potential employment prospects how would you like if they said that you were "harassing" them?
- jlarocco 12y ago
  I agree with you about Linkedin for computer jobs, but monster.com and the other job sites are the same way. When I post an updated resume on monster.com, I have scummy recruiters calling me the very next day. So that's not a Linkedin problem, it's a shitty recruiting/hiring in the IT world problem. I don't think it's so bad for other professions, though. My girlfriend has found a job through her Linkedin contacts, and a friend of mine who does sales has found a job through his network there, too.
- Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
  I'm working with my employer (a consulting firm) to try and build a solution to this issue. We're trying to keep recruiters out of the loop and place value directly on contractors. Keep your eye out this weekend, we're going to go live and leave another post here.
- zippergz 12y ago
  I don't know if that kind of contact works, but I have gotten a very well-paying full-time, full-benefits job through LinkedIn. I hate their spamming practices, but I do find the site useful.
  - colechristensen 12y ago
    I've been contacted through LinkedIn by several uninteresting recruiters, but also directly by many big names in tech for seemingly high quality jobs. There's good and there's bad on LinkedIn, but it certainly isn't worthless. By now it has the market penetration to be very difficult to replace, and it could be made great if it were just a little less annoying.
- ry0ohki 12y ago
  The really terrible thing is how hard it is to get those contacts OUT of the system. The best part is once you figure out how, they only let you delete 100 at a time (odd they had the capability to upload more than that at once). Just spent an hour last week doing this.
  - swang 12y ago
    How do I do this? Annoying they are recommending some people just because we had email contact.
- a3n 12y ago
  I got my current job, which is pretty good, from an agency cold-calling me via linkedin. But I'm not a superstar. That said, it's been infuriating trying to figure out why or where I might know all those "you may knows." And I never contact anyone who contacts me via linkedin, unless they write something non-robotic in the message, because I assume it's a linkedin bot sending messages to an uploaded contact list.
- jval 12y ago
  I've always been puzzled by people who hate on recruiters contacting them through LinkedIn. If you dislike it so much, why don't you delete your LinkedIn profile? It's obviously there to facilitate exactly this kind of behaviour, so I don't see why there's any issue around it. To the contrary, I see these kinds of complaints as being a common form of humblebragging in the developer community. It comes across as: 'Gosh, isn't it tough being contacted by these recruiters all the time because my skills are under such high demand in the labor marketplace. Deleting that one email every few weeks sure does some serious damage to my psychological well-being.' The substance of this article is about email spam generated by LinkedIn itself. I think we should focus on that, and on the broader issue of where the limits are for email invitations in web applications. The issue this has highlighted (for me at least) is that it is easy to do damage to the reputations for others by putting their names on emails they didn't ask to be sent. This doesn't just mean losing users, it actually means souring and sometimes ruining the valuable relationships that users have with their colleagues and friends. There's a lot of trust and power inherent when someone else's name is put on an email and that isn't something to be sneezed at.
  - simonswords82 12y ago
    There's no way getting contacted by recruiters (most of whom aren't reputable if they've got to resort to cold contacting via Linked In) is humblebragging. It's a total pain in the ass and I shouldn't have to delete my linked in account just to prevent it happening. In fact, recruiters that abuse Linked in like this should have their accounts deleted.
  - bendtheblock 12y ago
    I thought the purpose was to keep a list of professional contacts I know. I don't expect to be contacted by recruiters I've never met before on an almost hourly basis during the week. For my company, this is a genuine nuisance and most of our phone calls are from clueless recruiters offering candidates that don't even have the skills we're looking for. Even if we needed a recruiter, I'd hardly choose one that called out of the blue. It's getting to the stage where we have to put warnings for recruiters not to contact us because we get so many it's harming our productivity. So that's why I hate on it. As an employer, I can say I've never had a good recruitment experience even outside of this situation. However, I don't expect them to stop any time soon. If this is also a problem for anyone here, the best result is to quickly politely tell them you're not interested. Perhaps ask where they saw your details. Put a note there. Don't stay on the phone for the inevitable questions they've been trained to ask to keep you on the phone. Just say no if you value your time.
- davedx 12y ago
  Not my experience. 90% of the recruiters who contact me (and I get a lot of mail) are for genuine, decent paying contract work - usually in the EUR450-500 day rate range. You have to ignore the obnoxious stuff you don't like with LinkedIn and just treat it as a tool.
jwheeler79 12y ago
eat it linkedin. You're a bunch of shitty jerks.
- hockeybias 12y ago
  How do you really feel?
J_Darnley 12y ago
While it may be a worthwhile case my solution to the few linkedin emails I received was to mark them as spam and move on.
- BSousa 12y ago
  I had to create a rule in gmail. Marking them as spam didn't seem to work too well and still a lot slipped through. Now anything that has linkedin.com in subject, from, to, and body is automatically deleted.
  - smtddr 12y ago
    That's going to cause problems for you one day. Some people put their LinkedIn in their signatures.
    - BSousa 12y ago
      Maybe, but to be honest, haven't had one complain of not replying to emails yet (Except from recruiters). Maybe I'm just not involved in a lot of circles with folks that do that (looking at signatures of most of my emails, most just have name, email and phone)
suyash 12y ago
LinkedIn is the worst offender when it comes to SPAM. I've turned off all possible settings to recive 0 emails still get multiple messages everyday :(
adwordsjedi 12y ago
I'd appreciate if they let me unsubscribe from their damn emails on a catch all account where I get a former employee's emails. They make you log-in to opt out and I'm not about to reset the guy's password in case he still uses linkedin.
- aendruk 12y ago
  They don't make you log in. Use this form [1] and they'll blacklist your email address system-wide [2]. Be sure to include any spelling variations (e.g. an optional dot) that may be in your contacts' address books: Please add my email addresses to the Do Not Contact List: andrew@example.com and.rew@example.com throwaway@example.com Thank you, Andrew I did this in April and haven't since received anything but a confirmation from their customer support. [1]: https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/dnca https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/dnca [2]: https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/ https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/
phkahler 12y ago
Linked-In used to put up a message wanting to "verify" my email address and ask for a password. I made it a point to never ever give them my email password because I thought they'd help themselves. Anyone know if they do? I also gave my linked-in account it's own password in case they might try do something crappy like trying to get at my email assuming its the same password. It's not just them, half the apps on Google Play want access to my contacts, texts, and/or location - stuff the app itself has no use for.
- cyber 12y ago
  Ideally, you should be using a unique password at every site. There are plenty of secure password storage tools to help you keep track. That way, even if there is a site breach, your other accounts are not at risk.
Zelphyr 12y ago
LinkedIn is a classic example of how a company must shift from serving their customer to serving their investors after they go public. They used to be a very useful service.[1] But the closer they got to their IPO the more the started doing things that were clearly in the best interest of generating more page views regardless of how valuable those things were to their users. To my mind this lawsuit was brought about because of that very behavior. 1: Not accounting for the recruiters who have plagued it. Something LinkedIn could probably deal with but they don't want to because that would affect page views.
- josu 12y ago
  >page views Why does Linkedin care about pageviews?
  - 001sky 12y ago
    Pretty clearly stated in the comment you are replying to. Investment Bankers care about pageviews. Valuations are driven by operating metrics when financial metrics alone cannot support a valuation at desired levels. Since linked-in executives get a cut of the IPO proceeds (directly or indirectly), the logical link follows that "the company" cares about these things. Or at least they did in the context of pre-IPO window dressing.
    - josu 12y ago
      Sorry, I thought that Linkedin didn't serve ads, I should have checked before.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Presumably they try to drive up page views in order to make more revenue. Are you saying that they wouldn't do the same if they were still privately held? Maybe after their IPO the thought is that they're no longer going to get magical money raining down on them, so they actually have to try to generate more profit? Although it must be hard for people with option grants when there's a P/E approaching 1000 and you need the price to keep going up to do well.
prezjordan 12y ago
My favorite LinkedIn feature is how invitations are not sent by linkedin.com, but your friend/colleague/etc. This way, marking it as spam doesn't hurt them. I had to go through several rounds of customer support to get my information off of their site. "You don't have an account" they would repeat - of course I don't, which is why it bothers me that I still get invitations and show up in your "recommended" lists. Not to mention the fake endorsements.
- sbov 12y ago
  There's protections against this sort of thing that major isps implement. You can't just set your from address to whatever you want. Well you can, but it would be likely be rejected, or at least wouldn't reach your target's inbox.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    SPF allows you to fake the From header, so long your Return-Path is your own domain and passes checks. DMARC can pass if SPF passes. To end users, there's no discernible difference when there's another Return-Path domain. DKIM does allow you to force the From header to be signed, so hopefully that'll continue to pick up steam. It does break some things, like some mailing lists, and that probably contributes to why it's taken so long to get such things going. There's also a lot of "business critical" software out there that just assumes it can send as any user.
- _delirium 12y ago
  It depends on how the spam-filtering is implemented, but mark-as-spam should still hurt them in a well-designed system. The 'From' is set to the person in question, but the envelope sender is correctly identified as LinkedIn (or else the mails would often fail SPF checks), and you can filter based on that.
cma 12y ago
It's a virus with a EULA.
6cxs2hd6 12y ago
From the article I understand the suit is by LinkedIn members whose contact book was (in their opinion) abused to send these invitation emails to non-members. On the face of it that's a reasonable claim and seems they should prevail. But also: How about the recipients -- who are getting repeated unsolicited commercial emails? How does this activity not violate CAN-SPAM? Shouldn't LinkedIn be subject to fines? Edit: Although I don't terribly mind the downvote, especially if it was accidental -- I did read the whole article and had a genuine question.
nevi-me 12y ago
I used to be on LinkedIn, but deleted my profile a year and half ago. I still get e-mails about invitations from people who know me, and whenever I choose to unsubscribe from them, I still get them. The scary thing is that when you click through the link to confirm, they used to ask you to 'change a password' implying that a ghost account in your name already exists. I just checked it now, and it just offers me to create an account instead.
darkhorn 12y ago
Relevant http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/27yldl/snoop_find_informations_about_an_email_owner/ http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/27yldl/snoop_find_infor...
1___1 12y ago
I logged into Linkedin recently for the first time in a while, and I was APPALLED to find that they had suggested the psychiatrist I saw during college for depression as a contact. They must have mined out her contacts info. This stuff is extremely sensitive and should be confidential, but Linkedin totally disregards that.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Hang on: why is your psychiatrist leaking identifiable information to anyone? The problem there is the (criminal?) failings of the psychiatrist, not of the scummy behaviour of LinkedIn.
Kequc 12y ago
For anyone talking about receiving too much LinkedIn spam it was revealed to me on HN that they actually have a do not contact list. I sent them an email listing off my email addresses a little while ago and they've honoured it. https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/ https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/
- o0-0o 12y ago
  This same process did not work for me, at all. My dead relatives I emailed years ago are always in my recommendation list. I never connected to an external account, and have repeatedly tried to contact linkedin with no response. I'll gladly be a counterparty to this suit.
misingnoglic 12y ago
I don't know how many times I've accidentally sent emails to random people asking them to join LinkedIn because the button looks like the one for connecting with someone already on the site, two different things.
vjvj 12y ago
As much as I rely on LinkedIn they have a HORRIBLE approach to user privacy. Hope they get hit hard and learn a lesson.

221 points by salemh 12y ago

While Koh agreed to throw out claims based on federal wiretap and stored communications claims, she said LinkedIn may have violated California’s right of publicity, which protects against the appropriation of someone’s name or likeness, without their consent, for commercial purposes.

ciderpunx 12y ago

Hope that LinkedIn lose that suit. I had tonnes of people with me in their address book bombarding me with LinkedIn invitations - it'd make me feel better about that.

bhhaskin 12y ago

Its about time LinkedIn got call on this. They have been doing this for years.

waterfowl 12y ago

Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't imagine any legitimate "superstars" actually respond to these folks. Edit: the really awkward thing is when it starts recommending you one night stands from years ago just because you may have at some point exchanged an email.

nilkn 12y ago
> I can't imagine any legitimate "superstars" actually respond to these folks. Well, of course not. The goal isn't to get those people. It's to get the people who aren't that good but are just good enough and therefore are actually awed by having someone contact them and refer to them as an extreme cutting edge web 2.0 ninja.
jacquesm 12y ago
Facebook does the exact same thing. I keep getting their spam and I don't have an account so they pester me to sign up. Incredible that such big companies get away with this. Even google has joined the legion of spammers with their new 'g+ linkdrive'.
vonmoltke 12y ago
While I have certainly had my share of clueless recruiters contact me through LinkedIn, I have also had a good number of decent contacts that either didn't pan out or which I just wasn't interested in. I don't get nearly the deluge of contacts that some people here say they get, though.
- waterfowl 12y ago
  I'm pretty early career(graduated in 2012) and even I get harassed on the regular. Maybe they bother younger people more because they think we're less expensive(which is generally true) but the only "legit" linkedin recruiters I ever heard from seemed like Google/FB/Palantir/etc"spam every graduating CS kid in x region" as an invitation to apply rather than a normal "recruiting for a specific opening" type thing. Maybe I just have a shitty linkedin(but it does say plz no recruiters on it)
  - xauronx 12y ago
    I think there's something at play with when you're "looking". I didn't update anything to specifically say that I was in the market for a new job, but when I was, I was receiving a shitload of emails. Now that I switched jobs and I'm happily employed for about a year I only get like one every couple weeks. Not sure what kind of algorithm they use but it's pretty good.
    - seestheday 12y ago
      I notice that whenever I update my profile I tend to get a huge increase in emails.
  - larrys 12y ago
    You probably should develop a different attitude for you own benefit. You are just starting out and the shit recruiter today may very well progress in their career (perhaps they are even a newbie to recruiting) and you may need them down the road. Even if annoying, no sense to burn bridges. You can always be polite and keep the door open. Your job prospects may be good today but not in 5 or 10 years. As far as "harassed" welcome to the world of outbound selling. If you were out of a job and were sending out resumes and contacting potential employment prospects how would you like if they said that you were "harassing" them?
jlarocco 12y ago
I agree with you about Linkedin for computer jobs, but monster.com and the other job sites are the same way. When I post an updated resume on monster.com, I have scummy recruiters calling me the very next day. So that's not a Linkedin problem, it's a shitty recruiting/hiring in the IT world problem. I don't think it's so bad for other professions, though. My girlfriend has found a job through her Linkedin contacts, and a friend of mine who does sales has found a job through his network there, too.
Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
I'm working with my employer (a consulting firm) to try and build a solution to this issue. We're trying to keep recruiters out of the loop and place value directly on contractors. Keep your eye out this weekend, we're going to go live and leave another post here.
zippergz 12y ago
I don't know if that kind of contact works, but I have gotten a very well-paying full-time, full-benefits job through LinkedIn. I hate their spamming practices, but I do find the site useful.
- colechristensen 12y ago
  I've been contacted through LinkedIn by several uninteresting recruiters, but also directly by many big names in tech for seemingly high quality jobs. There's good and there's bad on LinkedIn, but it certainly isn't worthless. By now it has the market penetration to be very difficult to replace, and it could be made great if it were just a little less annoying.
ry0ohki 12y ago
The really terrible thing is how hard it is to get those contacts OUT of the system. The best part is once you figure out how, they only let you delete 100 at a time (odd they had the capability to upload more than that at once). Just spent an hour last week doing this.
- swang 12y ago
  How do I do this? Annoying they are recommending some people just because we had email contact.
a3n 12y ago
I got my current job, which is pretty good, from an agency cold-calling me via linkedin. But I'm not a superstar. That said, it's been infuriating trying to figure out why or where I might know all those "you may knows." And I never contact anyone who contacts me via linkedin, unless they write something non-robotic in the message, because I assume it's a linkedin bot sending messages to an uploaded contact list.
jval 12y ago
I've always been puzzled by people who hate on recruiters contacting them through LinkedIn. If you dislike it so much, why don't you delete your LinkedIn profile? It's obviously there to facilitate exactly this kind of behaviour, so I don't see why there's any issue around it. To the contrary, I see these kinds of complaints as being a common form of humblebragging in the developer community. It comes across as: 'Gosh, isn't it tough being contacted by these recruiters all the time because my skills are under such high demand in the labor marketplace. Deleting that one email every few weeks sure does some serious damage to my psychological well-being.' The substance of this article is about email spam generated by LinkedIn itself. I think we should focus on that, and on the broader issue of where the limits are for email invitations in web applications. The issue this has highlighted (for me at least) is that it is easy to do damage to the reputations for others by putting their names on emails they didn't ask to be sent. This doesn't just mean losing users, it actually means souring and sometimes ruining the valuable relationships that users have with their colleagues and friends. There's a lot of trust and power inherent when someone else's name is put on an email and that isn't something to be sneezed at.
- simonswords82 12y ago
  There's no way getting contacted by recruiters (most of whom aren't reputable if they've got to resort to cold contacting via Linked In) is humblebragging. It's a total pain in the ass and I shouldn't have to delete my linked in account just to prevent it happening. In fact, recruiters that abuse Linked in like this should have their accounts deleted.
- bendtheblock 12y ago
  I thought the purpose was to keep a list of professional contacts I know. I don't expect to be contacted by recruiters I've never met before on an almost hourly basis during the week. For my company, this is a genuine nuisance and most of our phone calls are from clueless recruiters offering candidates that don't even have the skills we're looking for. Even if we needed a recruiter, I'd hardly choose one that called out of the blue. It's getting to the stage where we have to put warnings for recruiters not to contact us because we get so many it's harming our productivity. So that's why I hate on it. As an employer, I can say I've never had a good recruitment experience even outside of this situation. However, I don't expect them to stop any time soon. If this is also a problem for anyone here, the best result is to quickly politely tell them you're not interested. Perhaps ask where they saw your details. Put a note there. Don't stay on the phone for the inevitable questions they've been trained to ask to keep you on the phone. Just say no if you value your time.
davedx 12y ago
Not my experience. 90% of the recruiters who contact me (and I get a lot of mail) are for genuine, decent paying contract work - usually in the EUR450-500 day rate range. You have to ignore the obnoxious stuff you don't like with LinkedIn and just treat it as a tool.

jwheeler79 12y ago

eat it linkedin. You're a bunch of shitty jerks.

hockeybias 12y ago
How do you really feel?

J_Darnley 12y ago

While it may be a worthwhile case my solution to the few linkedin emails I received was to mark them as spam and move on.

BSousa 12y ago
I had to create a rule in gmail. Marking them as spam didn't seem to work too well and still a lot slipped through. Now anything that has linkedin.com in subject, from, to, and body is automatically deleted.
- smtddr 12y ago
  That's going to cause problems for you one day. Some people put their LinkedIn in their signatures.
  - BSousa 12y ago
    Maybe, but to be honest, haven't had one complain of not replying to emails yet (Except from recruiters). Maybe I'm just not involved in a lot of circles with folks that do that (looking at signatures of most of my emails, most just have name, email and phone)

suyash 12y ago

LinkedIn is the worst offender when it comes to SPAM. I've turned off all possible settings to recive 0 emails still get multiple messages everyday :(

adwordsjedi 12y ago

I'd appreciate if they let me unsubscribe from their damn emails on a catch all account where I get a former employee's emails. They make you log-in to opt out and I'm not about to reset the guy's password in case he still uses linkedin.

aendruk 12y ago
They don't make you log in. Use this form [1] and they'll blacklist your email address system-wide [2]. Be sure to include any spelling variations (e.g. an optional dot) that may be in your contacts' address books: Please add my email addresses to the Do Not Contact List: andrew@example.com and.rew@example.com throwaway@example.com Thank you, Andrew I did this in April and haven't since received anything but a confirmation from their customer support. [1]: https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/dnca https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/dnca [2]: https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/ https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/

phkahler 12y ago

Linked-In used to put up a message wanting to "verify" my email address and ask for a password. I made it a point to never ever give them my email password because I thought they'd help themselves. Anyone know if they do? I also gave my linked-in account it's own password in case they might try do something crappy like trying to get at my email assuming its the same password. It's not just them, half the apps on Google Play want access to my contacts, texts, and/or location - stuff the app itself has no use for.

cyber 12y ago
Ideally, you should be using a unique password at every site. There are plenty of secure password storage tools to help you keep track. That way, even if there is a site breach, your other accounts are not at risk.

Zelphyr 12y ago

LinkedIn is a classic example of how a company must shift from serving their customer to serving their investors after they go public. They used to be a very useful service.[1] But the closer they got to their IPO the more the started doing things that were clearly in the best interest of generating more page views regardless of how valuable those things were to their users. To my mind this lawsuit was brought about because of that very behavior. 1: Not accounting for the recruiters who have plagued it. Something LinkedIn could probably deal with but they don't want to because that would affect page views.

josu 12y ago
>page views Why does Linkedin care about pageviews?
- 001sky 12y ago
  Pretty clearly stated in the comment you are replying to. Investment Bankers care about pageviews. Valuations are driven by operating metrics when financial metrics alone cannot support a valuation at desired levels. Since linked-in executives get a cut of the IPO proceeds (directly or indirectly), the logical link follows that "the company" cares about these things. Or at least they did in the context of pre-IPO window dressing.
  - josu 12y ago
    Sorry, I thought that Linkedin didn't serve ads, I should have checked before.
MichaelGG 12y ago
Presumably they try to drive up page views in order to make more revenue. Are you saying that they wouldn't do the same if they were still privately held? Maybe after their IPO the thought is that they're no longer going to get magical money raining down on them, so they actually have to try to generate more profit? Although it must be hard for people with option grants when there's a P/E approaching 1000 and you need the price to keep going up to do well.

prezjordan 12y ago

My favorite LinkedIn feature is how invitations are not sent by linkedin.com, but your friend/colleague/etc. This way, marking it as spam doesn't hurt them. I had to go through several rounds of customer support to get my information off of their site. "You don't have an account" they would repeat - of course I don't, which is why it bothers me that I still get invitations and show up in your "recommended" lists. Not to mention the fake endorsements.

sbov 12y ago
There's protections against this sort of thing that major isps implement. You can't just set your from address to whatever you want. Well you can, but it would be likely be rejected, or at least wouldn't reach your target's inbox.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  SPF allows you to fake the From header, so long your Return-Path is your own domain and passes checks. DMARC can pass if SPF passes. To end users, there's no discernible difference when there's another Return-Path domain. DKIM does allow you to force the From header to be signed, so hopefully that'll continue to pick up steam. It does break some things, like some mailing lists, and that probably contributes to why it's taken so long to get such things going. There's also a lot of "business critical" software out there that just assumes it can send as any user.
_delirium 12y ago
It depends on how the spam-filtering is implemented, but mark-as-spam should still hurt them in a well-designed system. The 'From' is set to the person in question, but the envelope sender is correctly identified as LinkedIn (or else the mails would often fail SPF checks), and you can filter based on that.

cma 12y ago

It's a virus with a EULA.

6cxs2hd6 12y ago

From the article I understand the suit is by LinkedIn members whose contact book was (in their opinion) abused to send these invitation emails to non-members. On the face of it that's a reasonable claim and seems they should prevail. But also: How about the recipients -- who are getting repeated unsolicited commercial emails? How does this activity not violate CAN-SPAM? Shouldn't LinkedIn be subject to fines? Edit: Although I don't terribly mind the downvote, especially if it was accidental -- I did read the whole article and had a genuine question.

nevi-me 12y ago

I used to be on LinkedIn, but deleted my profile a year and half ago. I still get e-mails about invitations from people who know me, and whenever I choose to unsubscribe from them, I still get them. The scary thing is that when you click through the link to confirm, they used to ask you to 'change a password' implying that a ghost account in your name already exists. I just checked it now, and it just offers me to create an account instead.

darkhorn 12y ago

Relevant http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/27yldl/snoop_find_informations_about_an_email_owner/ http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/27yldl/snoop_find_infor...

1___1 12y ago

I logged into Linkedin recently for the first time in a while, and I was APPALLED to find that they had suggested the psychiatrist I saw during college for depression as a contact. They must have mined out her contacts info. This stuff is extremely sensitive and should be confidential, but Linkedin totally disregards that.

DanBC 12y ago
Hang on: why is your psychiatrist leaking identifiable information to anyone? The problem there is the (criminal?) failings of the psychiatrist, not of the scummy behaviour of LinkedIn.

Kequc 12y ago

For anyone talking about receiving too much LinkedIn spam it was revealed to me on HN that they actually have a do not contact list. I sent them an email listing off my email addresses a little while ago and they've honoured it. https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/ https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/

o0-0o 12y ago
This same process did not work for me, at all. My dead relatives I emailed years ago are always in my recommendation list. I never connected to an external account, and have repeatedly tried to contact linkedin with no response. I'll gladly be a counterparty to this suit.

misingnoglic 12y ago

I don't know how many times I've accidentally sent emails to random people asking them to join LinkedIn because the button looks like the one for connecting with someone already on the site, two different things.

vjvj 12y ago

As much as I rely on LinkedIn they have a HORRIBLE approach to user privacy. Hope they get hit hard and learn a lesson.