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LinkedIn is a Virus

a.wholelottanothing.org

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Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#81

Post by aetherson »

ghshephard wrote: post #4
troebr wrote: post #2

The exact same thing happened to me with http://viadeo.com/ , a linkedin clone pretty popular in France. The way it was worded hinted that I could chose from contacts who were on both my gmail contacts and viadeo users to connect with them. Not send an add to subscribe to viadeo to my entire contact list (who would ever want to do that??). It's such a horrible feeling when you realize what just happened. It emailed m…

ex-girlfriends, ouch. I initially thought this feature, while annoying, wasn't that big a deal. I've changed my mind.

LinkedIn does a real number on this one. A few weeks ago, I got a "Do you know so-and-so" email from LinkedIn. Most of the people they suggested that I knew were people in my general social circle, and I presume that LinkedIn was just saying, "Person X is a connection of persons Y, Z, Alpha, and Beta, as are you. Perhaps you know person X?"

But one was an ex-girlfriend.

Which was weird, because we hadn't dated long and had, to my knowledge, no social overlap before, during, or since the time that we dated (we met using a dating site). So, I thought, "How does LinkedIn know that I know her?"

And the conclusion I came to is that she had at some point recently uploaded her address book, and deliberately not chosen me as a contact, and then LinkedIn decided to try to nag me into initiating the contact that it knew we probably had.

Which is, to my mind, pretty evil. She didn't choose to contact me. LinkedIn basically used information out of her address book without her permission or knowledge. In an admittedly very minor way, LinkedIn decided to cyber-stalk her on my "behalf," without either of our permission.

(As it happens, we broke up amicably and no harm was done. But still, it was kind of gross.)

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#82

Post by thesteamboat »

Justsignedup wrote: post #79
shadesandcolour wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of those websites scan your address book and show you people that are already on the site and then ask you to send emails to people who aren't. It's reasonable to not know that 11,000 people would be on linked in. Also Linkedin isn't exactly a website that he "wasn't sure about". Everyone knows what the site is and does. Also your Rule 1 is kinda silly. I guess as long as I keep the passwords to those to sites…

Believe it or not, I blame this entire incident on Google, not LinkedIn. Reasons? a) you sign in using google. That is actually a REALLY GOOD PRACTICE because it gives you lots of benefits of oauth (I can de-authorize an account). b) you only have the one password to remember, which is good for most people. Why it's bad? Because when signing in, the other side can ask for details from your account and the best you ca…

Not to detract from your point, just nitpicking for a moment. The word you're for at the end is voilà, of French origin.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#83

Post by dkersten »

jpdoctor wrote: post #11

My version: I was on the iPad, somehow hit a link to send invites to everyone on my "you might know" list. Much embarassment ensued. Surprisingly, about 75% of people who I've never met (online or IRL) accepted the invite. I'm not exactly sure why Linkedin is worth a damn anymore.

LinkedIn started being worthless to me when the people started contact whoring. Now it serves little more than a place to dump a resume, but really, we don't need linkedin for that.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#84

Post by uptown »

EvanKelly wrote: post #74
Bjoern wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains why $random people I've never met send me connect invites. I normally ignore them, but still waste time trying to figure out if its important or not. -.-. Can one safely ignore all these "Business" networks? Wonder what people get out of it.

I'll connect with someone in my field and location, because those are the connections I hope to foster with LinkedIn. One of the weirder things I've experience is people "endorsing" my skills. Many of which are skills they've certainly never seen me use. I assume they were doing it for some sort of reciprocal endorsement, but I don't want my name attached to someone's skills that I know nothing about.

My mortgage broker endorsed my jQuery skills. While they are excellent - I doubt she knows what jQuery is.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#85

Post by josho »

criley wrote: post #46
rubyrescue wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any tips you could give?

Cultivate connections with people you know and trust, rely on their connections instead of trying to force connections with people you don't know. The power of linked in isn't building a giant list of everyone who is related to you, it's building a tiny list of really awesome people who have a tiny list of really awesome people who have a tiny list of really awesome people... TL;DR: If you curate content, don't be su…

Your suggestion is the way that linked in used to work. Where your links were ideally strong connections that could vouche for you or make an introduction.

But now that linked in is trying to monetize their platform and restricts you from seeing people outside of your immediate network it has become a connect to everyone network.

It has been interesting to watch how linked in's efforts to make money has been leading to the weakening of their platform.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#86

Post by jff »

thesteamboat wrote: post #82
Justsignedup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, I blame this entire incident on Google, not LinkedIn. Reasons? a) you sign in using google. That is actually a REALLY GOOD PRACTICE because it gives you lots of benefits of oauth (I can de-authorize an account). b) you only have the one password to remember, which is good for most people. Why it's bad? Because when signing in, the other side can ask for details from your account and the best you ca…

Not to detract from your point, just nitpicking for a moment. The word you're for at the end is voilà, of French origin.

Points for originality with "vuala", though. Usually it's just "viola" or "wallah"

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#87

Post by 42tree »

Another Linkedin Virus feature:

the default setting on group discussion is that whenever someone replies to a discussion, all the people who replied before get email notifications.

At one time, I thought Linkedin is nothing but a huge email spam machine.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#88

Post by matthaughey »

jQueryIsAwesome wrote: post #48
bsg75 wrote: post #33

There is surprise when an address book with over 1000 entries is voluntarily connected to a commercial service designed to link people together? Surprise when closing a browser tab does not stop the request from running at LinkedIn? Calling it a virus is disingenuous at best. Edit: ... or a way to get page views.

This, wait... no, sorry, not this. Joking aside; the first button is one that deselects all contacts and they mention the numbers of connections to be created right in the top. Here it is: http://i.imgur.com/3qiT140.jpg I do hate LinkedIn but for very different reasons, like pretending is a safety measure to not connect with strangers and then charging you for a premium service for direct-emailing anyone you want.

My problem was that everything you need on that page is along the left-hand side. The number of contacts pre-selected is pretty small, and off to the right. I was breezing through this, trying to find old friends (and it worked! The first contact suggested was someone I've known for ten years), and I just missed that little number line on the upper right.

Ideally, it should throw up a warning for trying to add anything over maybe 50-100 accounts, like a simple "Are you sure Y/N?" before allowing you to continue adding that many.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#90

Post by spenvo »

qdog wrote: post #29

Rule 1: Make sure your linkedin password is not the same as your gmail password. I've tried to login to linkedin a couple of times in too much of a hurry, thinking I was logging into linkedin from some request and not reading the actual page. Luckily my passwords are different. I'd have to say I'm not sure how someone who is tech savvy can knowingly give a company their gmail account info and expect nothing bad to ha…

This is the only way to keep LinkedIn out of your inbox short of using GMail filters. My highest-voted comment ever (27 upvotes) from a few months back:

"Linked-In has the spammiest email protocol out of any service I have ever used. Even after signing-in there is no one-click-to-unsubscribe button (they split it into about 12 scattered categories), and they create new categories periodically and opt you in to them. This is downright deceitful. Pro tip: change your email to one that you never use. It literally came down to doing this or deleting my Linked-in account--unfathomable to me. Also: no more f@#$!ng emails at 4 in the morning. This seems like a jackpot CAN-SPAM class action suit." link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4930040

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