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LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

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Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#51

Post by sk5t »

Caerus wrote: post #11

Facebook does the same thing and it's just as creepy. I closed my "real" account around 2011. A few months back I created a new blank account because I needed access to a couple organization's pages. The only information on that account is my name (a fairly common one) and an email address which is different from the one on my original account. It's possible they have some geographic info linking the two accounts as…

I suspect LinkedIn remembers people who looked for you but didn't try to connect, or you didn't have an account at the time. It has definitely suggested that I connect with the odd stalker with whom I have no other ties...

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#52

Post by some1else »

The site is down for me. Here is the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1436&bi...

Update: Creepy. But I think most of this data can be lifted from other users who imported contacts from GMail. I think they must be matching only by name, because people could have been in touch with different mail addresses (at a previous employer, for instance).

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#53

Post by dclowd9901 »

mindcrime wrote: post #43
joelandren wrote: post #12

Yes, I also noted the creepiness of "viewers of the profile also viewed." https://twitter.com/joelandren/status/251417778643406848 If I were a woman, I would be turned off to see something like this.

I'm not sure how much one should read into that. I mean, ok, there are probably some guys (and some women, as far as that goes) who click on profiles solely due to the attractiveness of the picture. BUT... there are other reasonable reasons to explain a picture like shown above. For example, note that all of the people listed appear to work in related domains (marketing, event management of some sort). Given the natu…

Further, there tends to be a high correlation between someone's success in a field such as marketing and recruiting, and their appearance. I don't want to generalize too much, but most recruiter emails I get are from very attractive women, and I have a feeling that's not unintentional, as gross as that sounds.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#54

Post by illuminate »

josh2600 wrote: post #6

I don't know, LinkedIn seems a lot less creepy than Facebook. I mean some of the ads I get hit with would make many folks blush.

"some of the ads I get hit with would make many folks blush"

I'm guessing the "likes" you have that cause the targeted ads to hone in on you would also make many folks blush.

At least, before I shut mine down some months ago, I had plenty of interesting likes but I never had any ads that didn't match my content.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#55

Post by chloraphil »

smutticus wrote: post #20
hollerith wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the neighbor put your name in LinkedIn's search box.

That or they have information on where you and your neighbor once lived. I have signed up for a couple of online brokerage accounts where they ask me questions about where I or my family have lived in the past. I got questions like; "At which of these 5 addresses has $BROTHER ever lived before?" And one of them was correct.

I've had similar questions when opening online accounts before, I believe that information comes from your credit report.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#56

Post by slig »

WilliamSt wrote: post #45
alex_c wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, Facebook does quite the opposite - there's always been demand for "see who looked at your profile" apps on Facebook, and Facebook has always gone out of their way to squash them. It's something they most certainly don't want to happen on their platform, with good reason.

You can bet Facebook is storing that data though. And who knows what the future holds, perhaps Facebook will be forced to sell that data to its users in order to increase revenue and make stock holders content?

Yes, they are. They have an ranked array of your top contacted/stalked friends and they use it to speed up the topbar search.

In fact, there is an bookmarklet that shows the list: http://thekeesh.com/2013/03/updated-facebook-friends-ranking...

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#57

Post by k3n »

vph wrote: post #31
speeder wrote: post #23

I just did a test and opened LinkedIn and took a look at the suggested people. They included: Several people with the same name as I (expected, not really creepy). But also: People that I trained martial arts with, and I NEVER exchanged electronic messages with them, and I do not talk with them for 4 years now. Also I doubt they remember me to search me, I am not much remarkable. People that I met at school and churc…

I am curious why this is supposedly creepy . I think the main premise of a social network is that you reach out or get reached out to people who might know you or you might know. Now, you have the option of not reaching out to those people, and I think it is fair game that the social network assumes that other members might reach out to you, a member of the network. If you do not like that aspect of the social networ…

Educated guesses are one thing; exact "guesses" are quite another, and one has to wonder where the 'guessing' is pulling its data.

Would it creep you out if I guess which month you were born in? Probably not.

Would it creep you out if I guessed your exact birthday, including month/day/year? Hell yeah it would.

It has nothing to do with whether or not one wants to be social, and everything to do with random, axe-murderer creepiness. Imagine if I walked up to you at a party and rattled off names of 5 random people from different aspects of your life; would that not freak you out? "Oh, you don't know me, but I know you ;)". That's virtually the same thing that is happening here.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#58

Post by jack-r-abbit »

The OP site is down so I don't know what they are citing as "creepy"... but I never considered LinkedIn to be a social network. It has always just been a professional network. It is my always on, mostly up to date resume. It has the who/what/where/when of my employment history. I have only accepted connections from people that I have worked with (and even then only those I actually worked with... not just anyone that worked at the same company but does not actually know me in some way) or friends that are in similar fields (and the rare cases of recruiters I've dealt with regarding employment). It actually bothers me that people use it to post twitter/facebook style status updates. LinkedIn is the last place I would think to read about someone's breakfast choice... but I've seen those updates before.
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