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LinkedIn Invites Gone Wild: How To Keep Close With Exes and Strangers
sholto writes "An aggressive expansion strategy by LinkedIn has backfired spectacularly amid accusations of identity fraud. Users complained the social network sent unrequested invites from their accounts to contacts and complete strangers, often with embarrassing results. One man claimed LinkedIn sent an invite from his account to an ex-girlfriend he broke up with 12 years ago who had moved state, changed her surname and her email address. ... 'This ex-girlfriend's Linked in profile has exactly ONE contact, ME. My wife keeps getting messages asking 'would you like to link to (her)? You have 1 contact in common!,' wrote Michael Caputo, a literary agent from Massachussetts."
How is this not considered criminal activity? Could LinkedIn just be the target of a spoofing campaign? I have a hard time believing they could be so stupid.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Linkedin found the connection somehow - maybe from your gmail account?
From what I can gather, people are using the "upload your contact list" / "connect to your email account" feature, without realizing that it automatically sends out invites to your contacts. I'm pretty sure it spells that out quite plainly, though; at least I vaguely recall that it did last time I decided not to use the feature.
LinkedIn has always seemed shady to me. I joined a few years ago, and got inundated with requests from people who seemed to do nothing with their time but offer to show me how to accumulate linked-in followers. My ex and I were simultaneously suggested to each other as contacts, probably because we still share some friends in common. Neither of us requested anything. I think the whole thing is just another social-media wank-fest, like twitter or google+.
I've been wondering about that for a while now. I get LinkedIn invites that seem unlikely. They have all the hallmarks of some automated process unknown to the user.
Proverbs 21:19
They've always been aggressive and aggravating, as far as I'm concerned. When a family member signed up with them I got a request. And another. And another. And they kept coming. I finally followed a link and told them to shut up and stop bothering me, but then another associate signed up and it started all over again. I can understand one invite, but they sent far more than was warranted, or could be considered reasonable or polite. I refuse to use them, not just because of the grudge, but also because I don't want them spamming friends or family based on my registration.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
This is exactly why I never let Linkedin access my contacts even though it bitches every single time I log on. Think it's time to delete my account now, it served its purpose and I'm employed.
While I find the constant barrage of "do you know" messages annoying, it's pretty clear to me what they are: a message from LinkedIn (NOT the person you might or might not know) asking if you might know this person, and sugesting that you invite THEM.
Once you click through on one of these, you get the standard LinkedIn invitation request. You are asked to make a selection as to how you know this person. If you check "I don't know this person", then you need to know their email address in order to complete the invitation. AS WITH ANY Linked-In invitation.
The annoying messages are NOT invitations, though, you AREN'T automatically connected by responding to them (the other person would have to approve) and they AREN'T sent from the other person's account. It's pretty clear they are sent by LinkedIn, trying to drum-up more connections.
have a three-some!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I don't get these anymore. I get spam email which are dupes of LinkedIn emails, but the names are bogus and the links are all wrong, so I know they're not genuine.
What I did to stop stupid spam?
I put in my profile in clear words, that if someone contacts me without having any connections, or from an area far away from where I live, especially if they claim to represent a recruitment firm, I will promptly report them as a spammer. I flagged several accounts, and I haven't had any stupid requests from LinkedIn in months.
I still occasionally get the ones I would expect from people who have several connections in common, or current/former co-workers, but those are fine to me, as I understand that that's what the system is for.
* H ?? ^From:
Linkedin is to employment as pakistani callcenters are to recruiting. I consider it another "social" site into which people excrete personal details and act perplexed when they receive an influx of redplum junkettes and robocalls. i save my "professional networking" for SCALE, LISA, and pertanent mailing lists.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I attend an AI group in Boston (for about two years ongoing) and I've learned to not give out my E-mail for this very reason.
Giving an E-mail address results in them entering it into LinkedIn, which results in me being spammed forever by that system. People I've never heard of send messages "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" (some store owner in a distant city).
The message has a convenient opt-out link, whose page is hilariously ambiguous:
"You're receiving these emails because a LinkedIn member invited you to become a part of their professional network. By clicking the "Unsubscribe" button, you will stop receiving these emails"
Two checkboxes below are labelled "Invitations to connect" and "Reminders to connect".
It took me awhile to realize that you have to *check* the boxes to stop receiving E-mails, instead of *uncheck* the boxes which is how pretty-much all other sites handle it.
I've never seen a compelling need for this LinkedIn service. Sure, if a member could manage their contacts effectively it might be useful, but the system auto-encourages bigger and more comprehensive webs... which are at the same time less and less useful.
My impression is that many of the people on the site are "salesmen" types, who think contact circles indicate how impressive they are. Professional networks just for the purpose of having professional networks.
Thanks, but no thanks. The address-book in my E-mail client works just fine. It even lets me add notes about the person - where I met them, what they do, &c.
It also doesn't hold my contact info up for everyone to see.
Linked in & facebook are targets of their own mediocrity. If there's a way for these companies to f@*k up with your private information, they're working on it. They harvest human stupidity for the idiocracy.
I guess most people aren't aware of how this actually works. Notice that if you visit LinkedIn on a computer that you normally use, it already knows who you are without having to sign in. So when you think you are casually using LinkedIn to look up an old girlfriend or co-worker that you detest, it logs that activity. Then it WAITS A FEW DAYS AND THEN ASKS THAT PERSON IF THEY KNOW YOU. Yes, it is that creepy.
I've been getting what I thought were phony LinkedIn invites. I thought they were some kind of spam, and set up a mail filter to drop them. Is LinkedIn itself sending those?
So many of these sites do that "hey, give us your username and password and we'll find people for you".
No way no how would I give any of them my password for my email account to sift through and find people. If I want to put information in there, I'll do it myself.
Though, it wouldn't surprise me if they used some other annoying mechanism to do these invites the user didn't do.
Like all social networking, your contacts and friends are extremely valuable to them. They want to expand it as much as possible, and might get a little overzealous in doing that.
As it is, I periodically get invites from people I don't know in LinkedIn, but if I don't know you or haven't worked with you, it's not happening.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Second hit for "linkedin email preferences." You're on Slashdot, and you don't know how to do this?
http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/67
Email notifications can be added, changed, or stopped in the Email Preferences section of the Settings page [...] The following options are available:
Individual Email
Daily Digest Email
Weekly Digest Email
No Email
Please help metamoderate.
Early on, it was a good way to reconnect with old friends and the groups actually had decent discussions. Most groups have devolved into a few people arguing amongst themselves (one even has become one person talking to themselves)and a place for people to self promote. For a while there many posts I saw were form bogus job offers and SEO spammers. I still use it to search for old friends but if I get a request from an unknown person I refuse it.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The snake will always end up eating its tail. They will always find enough rope to hang themselves, etc.
I had never signed with them up but after getting email invites almost daily to several email accounts, and unsubscribing many times, I finally added them to my blocked senders list. The people I get these invites from I already know on facebook and other sites anyway.
Now to convince my girlfriend that I wasn't looking through my ex's Facebook photo albums!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Was wondering what was going on...I added a few people from my contact list and then I started getting all these acceptances from everyone in my contact list along with some others who might have somehow been on an email cc list or just a random stranger.
"endorse" is a completely different, new, feature.
The endorsement messages do not come from the individuals you might endorse. Again, these are generated by LinkedIn, and the language makes that clear. Did you actually read them?
LinkedIn is asking you to validate that one of your connections "knows" some skill that they have listed.
I like the feature myself. It's meant as a bit of a BS filter, to give some credibility to people's claims. If you've got 100 connections and say you know "x", and nobody endorses you for "x", there's a good chance you're just making it up.
It's actually fun. Whenever I go on LinkedIn (which isn't very often) I'll plink-off a few, knowing that I'm helping people I've worked with validate their skills. If I worked with a person who was doing "x" when I worked with them, and I'm asked to endorse them for "x", I endorse them for "x". If I know they are BSing or simply don't know, maybe because their experience with "x" was later, then I pass it by. It's the way it's supposed to work. (There is no negative endorsement.)
Obviously, though, it will take time for the system to work, since it is a fairly new feature.
Does anybody use LinkedIn? I do. It's replaced my resume'. However, I don't follow the standard resume' advice to keep it to recent history. I've been a developer for 30+ years. Every job I've ever had is listed.
Without either of us attempting to contact each other, in any way - especially not Linked In, me and an old girlfriend became connected on Linked In. Fortunately, this was a really good thing. Both divorced, both have really good memories of our time together and now stay in regular contact. The only problem being that we live on different continents!
Second hit for "linkedin email preferences." You're on Slashdot, and you don't know how to do this?
If he only joined LinkedIn because he was forced to, I can understand not caring enough to customize it to his liking. Especially since "his liking" would be "not having it at all". In that case, getting rid of the unwanted email by sending it to the spam bucket is a perfectly rational solution.
I am not a crackpot.
Both of them are hungry for all the personal data they can get their hands on, so that they can turn around and sell anything to you, and sell you to anything. The problem is that while I'm completely in control of my choice to have a Facebook account (read: I don't have a facebook account), my most recent employer requires me to have a LinkedIn profile. Moreover, a lot of tech firms won't even consider you if they can't find you on LinkedIn. It's a horrible site, but unfortunately everybody expects you to play the game.
I still don't have a LI account (nor facebook nor twitter, nor g+)... I'm being told that being on LinkedIn is more or less obligatory if I want to have a reasonable chance of not being ignored by a hiring manager or HR drone. I'm being told this by colleagues and friends, a few of whom are hiring managers. I've been operating under the assumption that my reputation is enough to get me hired (as has been the case for at least 25 years) but what I'm hearing now is that if I don't show up on LinkedIn, my resume gets tossed.. I'm offended by the very idea and like to console myself that I probably don't want to work for anyone who filters resumes this way... Unfortunately, I'm approaching my sunset years and may not be able to afford to restrict my employment opportunities should I suddenly find myself unemployed.
I was just going to abandon LinkedIn, but I realized that I had actually been actively recruited (Stalked politely) by my current employer and would not have landed the awesomest job ever had I not had one...
So, I just put up with the spammyness by refusing any request of anyone I don't know personally.
Posting anon because ... just because.
It is spam; mark it as spam.
Palm trees and 8
I've thought for some time that LinkedIn has serious problems. The big problem is what to do when you get invites from people who aren't in your field. It started with real estate agents. Then friends or people with whom I exchanged business cards. Left unchecked, this reduces the value of the network. Bigger is not better. The end result is a reduction to one datum: "everybody is connected". We already knew that, so such a database adds nothing to our knowledge.
That might be by design or accident. Perhaps some people are annoyed by the privacy implications of LinkedIn and see filling it with noise as a way to make it more difficult for people to really figure out who their connections are. That can be defeated by using some sort of crawler that checks to see if you actually worked with the person, recommended them, etc. which brings us to another problem.
LinkedIn is always bothering me. Especially since IPO it's become more spammy. They're desperately trying to make you interact with it, because they need you to visit frequently so they can make money.
I'm sure it's being gamed too. It appears to be doing well now; but there's definitely trouble a brewin' there. It was a cool idea to focus on professional connections, but ultimately it may be just another social networking fad. We'll go back to simply, you know, talking to people we really know. I know I wouldn't miss it.
Stap my vitals! Jolly rotten I say.
Still I hope he got to shag the old gal. You know, for old times sake and all that rot. And, of course, to sort of compensate for the troubles he went through. I mean, the old spouse will never believe him anyway, so he might as well. And with considerable vim I say!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I can't remember if it was Yahoo Buzz or not...
Maybe *you* haven't given Linkedin permission to scrape your address book, but someone else did. If those other people have the email address you use for Linkedin in their contact list, Linkedin will still find a relationship between you two and suggest a connection. The right to be left alone should really apply to mail and other internet databases too, no opt out or anything, but default. Unless a company or person has explicit permission from you yourself, they should not be allowed to keep your information in their databases, regardless how they got it in the first place.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It was right after I was hired, and didn't think I'd be spammed to hell and back. I've since deleted the account.
>> ex-girlfriend's Linked in profile has exactly ONE contact, ME.
Yeah...I'd be worried about my wife talking to her too. Either this relationship ain't over, or it's time to unfriend this stalker.
I use LinkedIn like I used to use Plaxo--for an up to date contact list. Whenever I get someone's business card, I add them on LinkedIn and throw the card away. I don't see what the big deal is. I set the email prefs so LI never emails me ever, so it doesn't bug me. I will say I've accidentally sent out a lot of invites to random strangers because if you browse the "the people you may know" list on the iPad you can easily accidentally tap a profile instead of swiping to scroll which sends an invite out.
ralphbarbagallo.com
Apparently, he can't read well based on his /. name. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Funny, I don't have such an option. Probably because I'm not a member on their site, and never have been. But there's an account using my name and the scant bit of information in my Company Email signature, which spams all kinds of other people all the damn time.
Quit making excuses for them. They use spam and sham accounts to make their numbers look better. At this point, if you apply for a job at my company and put down LinkedIn, you're going right into the trashcan.
I've had a LinkedIn account for a decade or so. During most of that time, it was just a place to post my CV details, and to "link" to other professionals that I know. No longer.
Now, when I go to LinkedIn, they suggest numerous people as "People You May Know." Fine, let's take a look:
* my psychiatrist (who even knows that I have one!?!)
* the guy who painted my condo five years ago
* an ex-roommate from 11 years ago
* an acupuncturist who I used three times, in another city, eight years ago
* a casual acquaintance from 10 years ago (who may have sent me an invite)
* someone whose only connection to me is a one-time dance, and is a "FB friend." No emails between us
* a guy I shared an office with, but who was a jerk, so we never exchanged emails
* a guy who formerly lived in my condo complex
* a guy who was the grad-school advisor of a former workplace colleague, but whom I never socialized with
* a researcher at another lab, who I have only ever talked to once, and have never emailed
* a years-ago dance instructor whom I only ever contacted twice, via phone
* a guy whom I co-authored a single scientific paper with years ago, and emailed only once
* various students who have taken my courses
* a woman who worked at the same company I worked at, but whom I never had an email contact with (outside of the company's proprietary and encrypted Lotus Notes system)
* a former program manager at a lab I formerly worked at, 10 years ago, whom I only interacted with in person (no email)
* another guy I co-authored a journal article with, but never contacted by email outside my former employer's encrypted LotusNotes email system
* my former accountant
* a former frat brother, from 15 years ago, whom I have never emailed
* various program managers at national funding agencies whom I have contacted in the past via phone/email
* several former colleagues that I never emailed, but had only verbal contact with, from a lab 12 years ago
* a professor whom I emailed only once, 12 years ago regarding a postdoc position, but never met
* the son of a former colleague, who I ever only heard about in lunch conversation, and never interacted with
* a roommate from 10 years ago
* a prof I took an undergrad course from 19 years ago
* lots of profs and researchers whom I know professionally and personally, but whom I have never emailed
* plus lots of false hits...
Very creepy, and really, in a couple of cases violating HIPPA regulations through their disclosure of who-knows-whom.
Where are they mining? People's email address books, certainly. But probably also my bank, author lists on publications, speaker lists at conferences, and perhaps people who simply look up my profile.
Too creepy. I will soon cancel my LinkedIn account, and just make a website bearing my name (I already own the domain), so that people can find me without all of this creepy gray-zone crap.
I cancelled my LinkedIn account after the last blatant exploitation incident. But I still keep getting them. This just confirms why I cancelled my account.
Back in the day, linkedin used to be a useful way of connecting with people in the industry. I ignore "people you may know" (note to linkedin: if I may know them and I'm not currently connected, there may be a reason) but the real annoyance is the continuous request to link with obvious dummy contacts for marketing groups. That is, linked in requests to spam. And THEN, and then, there are the linked in requests that *are* themselves spam. "Arianna Dateme has requested a link with you. 'Hi, Ron, when I talked to you at that last conference, you expressed interest in our marketing buzzword generation service. Our team of trained weasels are ready to jump to your service in scalable vertical analytic b2c hyperlocal targeted contact enhancement. Call me on my private line for more information!'" It's getting very near the point where I'm dumping my account. The only thing I can think of that would make it worse is if they started charging. Oh wait.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I've gotten quite a bit more unsolicited vendor contact which I can almost surely pinpoint to linkedin.
Aggressive sales folk have figured out most companies email addresses are first letter of first name, last name.
If yours fits in under the normal kerberos/(open)LDAP limitations.. yep, you can ascertain my work email.
I usually get a few a day, and digging through to the HTML link to unsubscribe seems to do nothing to fight
the overwhelming wave of incoming bothers. Most of these solicitations seem to be auto-scraped and generated,
for example any simple review of my profile would see I'm not interested in Microsoft solutions.. or they are not relevant
to my job function, seemingly to only generated by a keyword or two.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
Wow, all this butt-hurt over a site that nobody is forcing you to use, which sends invitations nobody is forcing you to read. Personally I like LinkedIn, and don't think I've been spammed inappropriately or offended by any content it's displayed to me. If you don't feel the same way, you're free to cancel your account. What's the big deal? So much outrage!
Apparently you're not terribly good at reading between the lines.
Social networking isn't your thing, it's for the best you not use LinkedIn.
Are they signed with the private keys of your contacts?
The LinkedIn mobile app is looking at contact info stored on your smartphone...ALL contact data, past and present...and whatever other apps (example: Facebook) are linked to your smartphone contacts. Even if you have the settings set to ultra-private, the app still collects this data. After that data has been linked, the only way to "unlink" it is to completely delete your LinkedIn profile, and create an entirely new one, with a new email address, and don't install the LinkedIn mobile app.
I long ago wrote off Linkedin as an offensive spammer. They need to shut down.
This happened to me also. They changed their method of suggesting names derived from contact lists, and offered checkboxes so you could deselect names before submitting. Several of the names that I deselected recieved invites, and now I have contacts that I really didn't want at all. I just hope those who didn't accept my false invitation don't report me as a spammer. That would suck even more than this glitch.
-- Jimtown Kelly
Apparently you're not terribly good at reading between the lines.
Social networking isn't your thing, it's for the best you not use LinkedIn.
I always wondered what "Social networking" looked like. Apparently, it looks like high school.
So, that's why I got a linked-in connect request from an ex-girlfriend who I kicked out because she was mentally ill, who married someone else a couple weeks after moving out (and divorced a year later), and whom I didn't think I was going to hear from again after the restraining order? You mean to say the request wasn't actually FROM her? (Yeah, I just quietly ignored it anyway. Never a good idea to encourage crazy to contact you.)
I'm into AI development, post on slashdot, and don't get spam E-mail to begin with.
Reactive measures to deal with SPAM are pointless, they're a waste of time. The right way is to not get spam in the first place.
I'm careful about giving away my E-mail, use disposable addresses with everyone except close friends and family, and simply "turn off" any address that receives unwanted messages.
Filters are a PITA, they take time to create, tune, check, and manage. Have any useful messages been mistakenly put in your spam folder? I've never had that problem. I also don't scan for viruses, and have never been infected. My firewall is pretty solid.
Your intelligence project is doomed.
Thank you. I base my life on the opinions of others, and yours has added valuable input to that effort.
...that LinkedIn will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
I also hope that it will come really soon.
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
Why was FB not flagged for doing the same? These companies are valued on registered users that were inflated by this fraudulent marketing. How many of these users are regular users? 40%? LinkedIn P/E is 916 and FB's is 1,712. Can you say crash?
I've been getting spam addressed to someone named "aniket", or something like that (I don't have one handy to look at) for *years*. I've even complained to linkedin, and they said this and that, and nothing's changed.
I want an option that lets me say, NO, I DO NOT WANT TO CONNECT TO THIS IDIOT, NOR DO I EVER WANT TO RECEIVE ANYTHING FROM THEM AGAIN!!!
mark