LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

Post by btb » Fri, May 10, 2013, 8:45 AM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #102

TallGuyShort wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by gordaco » Fri, May 10, 2013, 9:21 AM 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,…

Post by harryf » Fri, May 10, 2013, 9:58 AM 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…

Post by qompiler » Fri, May 10, 2013, 11:33 AM UTC

harryf wrote: post #204

qompiler wrote: post #202

LinkedIn leaks privacy information through their "also viewed" section. Applied to a new job and started working there, after a few months I decided to look up my managers LinkedIn profile, only to notice that on his page the "also viewed" section showed employees from my older company and family. So yeah, so now I know he was trying to figure out more about me through LinkedIn.

I'm not sure this is a bad thing. In your example isn't a good thing to know your new boss did this? Social networks encourage creepy behavior amongst their users. LinkedIn lets you know who viewed your profile while Facebook doesn't. Personally I'd rather know.

Post by bad_user » Fri, May 10, 2013, 12:42 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #94

rayiner wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "who has viewed your profile" feature leads to epic lulz. There is this forum on the internet that is full or racists, misogynists, and homophobes (and is tangentially useful for getting legal industry gossip). A major troll posted a link to a fake Linked-In page (under his control) with a comment along the lines of: "how did this person get this job with such a shitty resume" (or something like that). When peopl…

Hrm. That shouldn't work unless they are within three degrees of the person. Or at least, it didn't work when I was there. Views to people's public profiles weren't recorded and there is no automatic redirect to their private profile. Links to people's private profiles have an auth token in it that is good only for the account that generated it, so unless you're relatively closely connected, you can't actually view l…