LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network • Hacker News Board

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#101

Post by thetrb » Thu, May 09, 2013, 5:38 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #91

I finally joined linkedin about a week ago, and it just feels...scammy. It's interesting to me (or frightening) that some of the smartest people I know have the fewest endorsements. People I know doing [1] actual real work on things like "microcontrollers" have...3-4 endorsements with them, but people who I know have only maybe installed Linux, have 20 or so endorsements for "linux". There are people I know who are p…

The number of endorsements is really just a matter of the number of connections and a persons activity on Linkedin (e.g. if a person endorses many others, then it's likely they will also be endorsed by them).

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#102

Post by coldpie » Thu, May 09, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #4

dbla wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always had the same hypothesis as to how they were able to find those random connections. Which is why I refuse to give any social network access to my email contact list. For my own privacy and for my contacts privacy.

Yeah this really highlighted to me the inherent danger of social computing - I can be as private as I want, but I'm only as private as my real life friends are about me. I don't have to upload my email contacts for third parties to find out all sorts of interesting things about who I talk to.

I actually avoid being in photos at parties and events these days thanks to this risk. Facial recognition creeps me the hell out, and no one can seem to stop putting squares and names around everyone's faces when they upload photos (what are you gaining by this????).

Gonna be fun times when everyone has Google Glass and that data leaks or, more likely, continues to be volunteered by others without my consent.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#103

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 09, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

samstokes wrote: post #98

michaelochurch wrote: post #72

Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually respects them. I was shocked,…

a certain social network gives universal profile access to employees as a perk This is a rather insidious thing to say without naming the network, particularly in a comment on a post about a particular network. Which is it? I know that both Facebook and LinkedIn have similarly strict rules about what user data you can look at.

[deleted]

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#104

Post by rhizome » Thu, May 09, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #97

onemorepassword wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. With all due respect, but you've gotta joking. Google doesn't even hold itself to the standards set by the laws in countries it operates in. Laws that are for now still full of loopholes Google happily exploits with zero restraint, despite knowing full well (not in the last place because they've been warned on a regular basis) that…

Not all laws in all countries are worth holding oneself to. For example, Russia has official internet censorship, does it mean Google should now support censorship too because some country has laws about that?

By what legal standard should Google be held, then? Are you really advocating the multinational/Internet companies pick and choose what laws they follow according to their own needs and whims?

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#105

Post by flomo » Thu, May 09, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

I've noticed that the "LinkedIn Updates" email spam tend to heavily feature a few attractive women than I worked with some time ago. I strongly suspect Linkedin is using these women's photos to bait people into clicking through to the site (and thus show up in the 'people also viewed' list).

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#106

Post by zevyoura » Thu, May 09, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

slig wrote: post #56

WilliamSt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To be clear, it seems that the data exposed in this way is only affected by your own actions; i.e. it does not tell you who has been stalking you, just who you've been stalking.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#107

Post by gertef » Thu, May 09, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

teraflop wrote: post #30

StavrosK wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that I've logged in to them from the same machine Wouldn't that be a dead giveaway?

If you can't log into Facebook from a public/shared computer without them disclosing your relationships to everyone else who uses that computer, they should make that very very clear.

They absolutely use geo-ip correlations, and it is a problem.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#108

Post by joethrow » Thu, May 09, 2013, 6:01 PM UTC

On a throw away account.

Several people have hit upon the major method LinkedIn uses which is that someone you know who has your name/email/... (or likely many someones) uploaded an address book to LinkedIn. LinkedIn then infers that because that person knows you, that you may know the other people they know (which is often true). They then combine that when a bunch of far more complicated inferences to generate the list.

The goal of course is to provide suggestions to someone who just signed up. Sadly, the reason it feels creepy is because it seems like voodoo. They could do a better job explaining how it worked, but a lot of the bigger inferences are secret sauce.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#109

Post by localhost3000 » Thu, May 09, 2013, 6:05 PM UTC

funny this should come up today. the girl i am currently dating happens to be both attractive and asian. i was on her linkedin yesterday and noticed that the "people also viewed" widget was 100% other young, good-looking asian women. so, add race as a vector to the linkedin creep graph...

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#110

Post by varjag » Thu, May 09, 2013, 6:05 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #72

Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually respects them. I was shocked,…

> When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually expects them.

Buzz.