This title could have stopped at the fourth word.
LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#42The best thing to do with a LinkedIn account is to delete it and never look back.
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#43I wouldn't mind getting rid of it, but all of my jobs have come through Linkedin recruiters so far.
It's also in part because any job advert I've seen is either intimidating (long list of skills required that I don't have), or they have a salary indication that's too low for me.
There seems to be a huge dropoff in job adverts after "senior developer with >5 years of experience". I have 15, but I'm not a manager or anything. But also the number of job openings for those are very limited, and I'm of the opinion that people should grow into a role like that instead of be hired into it.
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#44My account just was stolen. I received a couple of push notifications on my smartphone which I didn't react, and then received an email notification that a new email address was added to my account. And then I lost access to the account. What a piece of crap LinkedIn is.
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#45LinkedIn is a cesspool in general.
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#46I really wish LinkedIn would collapse and close so that something useful could take its place. At the moment I feel like it's squatting the "business networking" square on the board, but I don't know what it would take to dislodge it. I wrote a little about this on my blog about a decade ago and I don't feel we are any closer to it being dislodged.
Quite regularly I see people on HN post their alternatives to LinkedIn and all the other locked-in modern 3 sided marketplaces that are blights on the modern world.
And they all have the same problem LinkedIn has -- they don't fix the core incentive issues.
Because you know if any LinkedIn alternative ever becomes popular at some point they'll perform a rug pull to turn popularity into massive profit.
But they won't become popular because they first have to solve the trust issue.
And the trust issue is foundational. And has a solution -- it should be a non-profit and/or consumer co-op and/or producer co-op.
Which likely means it needs to be formed in Europe or Canada or someplace without the anti-co-op laws of the US that make it difficult for co-ops to raise capital.
And founders will have to be satisfied with solid six figure salaries instead of their dreams of becoming a billionaire.
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck actually unsubscribing from LinkedIn emails. The dark pattern they employ (or at least used to employ, for many many years) is to just periodically add new "categories" of email to send you, that you haven't yet unsubscribed from. Back in ~2015, out of frustration I changed my LinkedIn email to a throwaway
While I also dislike LinkedIn a lot, I unsubscribed once in the past and I haven't received a single email like that in years.
This would be illegal in the EU + UK, and certainly doesn't work like that in the UK. Potentially LinkedIn only made that change based on jurisdiction so maybe you two live in different places?
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#48I wouldn't mind getting rid of it, but all of my jobs have come through Linkedin recruiters so far. It's also in part because any job advert I've seen is either intimidating (long list of skills required that I don't have), or they have a salary indication that's too low for me. There seems to be a huge dropoff in job adverts after "senior developer with >5 years of experience". I have 15, but I'm not a manager or an…
You've got a chicken and egg problem now though, how do you get the senior devs to grow the juniors if you cant hire any seniors?
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#49I really wish LinkedIn would collapse and close so that something useful could take its place. At the moment I feel like it's squatting the "business networking" square on the board, but I don't know what it would take to dislodge it. I wrote a little about this on my blog about a decade ago and I don't feel we are any closer to it being dislodged.
Do you think LI's problem is innate to the platform, or it's users? How will an alternative professional social network make itself immune to the scourge of online 'business networking'?
I honestly believe the problem is inseparable from the social network itself. Either you have a space where people can connect and find jobs and nothing more, and you'll have zero engagement and no way to really fund the platform. Or you allow actual social networking (i.e. public posts) and then open yourself up for lots of engagement, and all the associated cancer that comes with that.
Re: LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft
#50LinkedIn is one of the most annoying sites on the internet. Every time I mistakenly click a link, it automatically grabs my Google account and creates a new account and profile for me, which I then have to go in and delete. Yes, I finally figured out which arcane preferences settings across both LinkedIn and Google I had to tweak to stop this from happening, but I think it was only after ChatGPT was around to help me…
Sorry, I don't understand. Somehow linkedin creates a new account (on linkedin? - so a brand new account?) without your agreement?
Yep, that happened to me too. The biggest joke was that LinkedIn forced me to create a password before I could delete the profile they'd created without my permission. This happened after I'd visited several LinkedIn links on my Pixel phone so they grabbed my Google email address and used that. Bear in mind also that I'd been retired for about six years at that point.