I have another theory... It's served its purpose and people are onto them... Let me explain. A while back 'friends' started popping up in my suggestions list.

I have another theory... It's served its purpose and people are onto them... Let me explain. A while back 'friends' started popping up in my suggestions list. I noticed that many of these were 'private' email addresses, ie email addresses i've used to sign up for a service, and were used only there, and nowhere else. I do not use these addresses to send email, they're only used to receive emails (newsletters etc). When i approached linkedin about this, they claimed i'd given them permission to access my gmail contacts on the mobile app. When i asked them for an exact date, they could not provide me with one, but responded with inStructions on how to remove these contacts. I'm 99% sure that i have never done so, i'm very very careful about this (manage a list of 15k+ members of an organization i run). The answer also did not make sense, because many of these suggested contacts should not show up in my gmail address book (receive-only, no interaction). My theory is that they've used the rapportive lookups to build a database of email addresses checked by my rapportive addon whenever i happen to click on an address in my inbox. If you search online, you'll find many people complaining about linkedin 'inviting' contacts without the initiative being taken by the user, and others who wonder how linkedin knew that they were acquainted with some of the suggested contacts. I must admit i have not bothered to gather conclusive proof of this, but like i said, many of the suggested contacts were single-use (generated on the fly on my own domain, anyone not found is forwarded to my admin account). I have disabled the rapportive addon after their response because i no longer trust it. Did miss it for a while, but with the changes outlined in this article, that's no longer an issue either. Ps i was one of the first 150k members of linkedin. Used to think they were the only decent social network in town. This trust has been lost forever. Guess that's hat happens when you go public. Growth required at all costs.