Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS

engineering.linkedin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 309 posts

Re: LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS

#13

Post by bjacobso »

jamra wrote: post #5

Proxy to return a header in your email. CSS to render the content upon click. IFrame to update content so it doesn't get cached. Cute web hacks. I don't understand the problem with simply using their mobile app if you were really looking for work. It sounds like an unnecessary feature for people who are looking and an annoyance to people who are not. That seems to be the problem of Linked In. They harass those who ar…

I don't think it is designed for people "looking for work". It seems to be built for business development. For example, an email like: "Hey, we met at a conference last month, just wanted to follow up..." - now you can see who they are, where they work, a profile picture to jog your memory and quickly connect - all from your email client. Very similar to what Rapportive did for Gmail.

Re: LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS

#14

Post by jwr »

carbocation wrote: post #4

Technologically this is straightforward: it uses a proxy server that sits in between you and your actual mailserver. I think the privacy concerns of having your mail (potentially) available over yet another server in exchange for modest convenience makes it unlikely that I would use this, but I'm sure many will find the trade-off acceptable and desirable.

There are lots of concerns:

* your local mail client might get different E-mail content every time mail is downloaded, which is not the intent of IMAP,

* LinkedIn (hence, the NSA) gets full access to your E-mail,

* once people get hooked it's easy to transition to inserting ads, or "more helpful LinkedIn content",

I find all this rather disturbing and would never use this service.

Re: LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS

#15

Post by nwh »

cag_ii wrote: post #3

Wouldn't this essentially allow them access to read/analyze/archive all of your email for any account you set up?

Of course. They can send as you too, which given their spammy record is quite a huge issue. They will also be storing your IMAP password in plaintext.

Re: LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS

#18

Post by nwh »

mpclark wrote: post #12

Surely corporate IT departments are going to have a collective heart attack as employees start handing all their email to a third party?

Additional madness when the services inevitably closes and tens of thousands of corporate tickets are files about non-working email clients.

Re: LinkedIn Intro: Doing the Impossible on iOS

#19

Post by rohitv »

bjacobso wrote: post #13
jamra wrote: post #5

Proxy to return a header in your email. CSS to render the content upon click. IFrame to update content so it doesn't get cached. Cute web hacks. I don't understand the problem with simply using their mobile app if you were really looking for work. It sounds like an unnecessary feature for people who are looking and an annoyance to people who are not. That seems to be the problem of Linked In. They harass those who ar…

I don't think it is designed for people "looking for work". It seems to be built for business development. For example, an email like: "Hey, we met at a conference last month, just wanted to follow up..." - now you can see who they are, where they work, a profile picture to jog your memory and quickly connect - all from your email client. Very similar to what Rapportive did for Gmail.

Here's the thing though, whenever I send an email like that to someone I always include my LinkedIn profile for them to check out, which would redirect to the app on their phone. Personally, it does seem a bit unnecessary to include this feature.
Post reply on HN