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LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

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Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#41

Post by pja »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #26
robinjfisher wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. I don't actually remember doing it and it's certainly something I do not do any more. I wasn't quite so security-conscious a few years ago.

> I don't actually remember doing it This probably indicates a dark pattern at work ( http://darkpatterns.org/ ) - it was presented as a quick, default and normal action and/or of little consequence, when actually it's quite invasive. You said that Linkedin would "scan your contacts to see if those people are on LinkedIn " and this is likely what it is presented as, but actually that information might be retained ind…

The LinkedIn Android App will periodically ask to scan your Google+ contacts for people you might know on LinkedIn, so if you've ever used that you could have leaked contacts to them that way.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#42

Post by robin2 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #12

> "LinkedIn allows you to sign in to your email account and it will scan your contacts..." Hand my contacts list to a website? No thank you. When is letting a website have this a good idea, not just Linkedin, but ever ?

There was a time when LinkedIn would often require you to re-enter you login details, seemingly at random. Login details consist, of course, of your email address plus a password, and so if you used the site much you kind of got used to entering them in every time they were requested.

The login form, unsurprisingly, looked very similar to the one suggesting that you give LinkedIn your email address plus you email account password. When I first noticed this, I thought that, for people who re-use passwords, this was an accident waiting to happen. I'm sure people must have been caught out by this.

I was very tempted to submit this to darkpatterns.org, but the first part of the pattern (frequent re-authentication) doesn't happen any more.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#43

Post by NickSharp »

blumkvist wrote: post #32
weixiyen wrote: post #24

Really surprised by all the comments here. This seems like a solid business decision by LinkedIn, riding the line of what a user is willing to accept and balancing it well with the potential rewards. Look at every famous company and you'll find tactics that you don't agree with, and sometimes downright illegal (Path). If you're not willing to do desperate things, to do what is necessary for user acquisition, good luc…

I've tried to explain this line of logic previously on HN and my experience is that the majority of the people here live in their own world. Much like people who enjoy reality TV, just more technically savvy. They babble about how FB decreases audience reach or how they hide their ad targeting instead of realizing the massive opportunity that is presented to the people who are willing to put the work. They besmirch g…

Who invited all these wanna be "businessmen" to our site?

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#45

Post by mpclark »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #12

> "LinkedIn allows you to sign in to your email account and it will scan your contacts..." Hand my contacts list to a website? No thank you. When is letting a website have this a good idea, not just Linkedin, but ever ?

I'm the same -- I never allow websites to riffle through my contacts, and would certainly never give up access to my email account to do it.

However, mobile apps have a much easier time of it. Looking at the contacts stored on one's phone is just one of the many permissions they request, and users are conditioned to just click past that screen anyway.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#46

Post by jebus989 »

robinjfisher wrote: post #6
callesgg wrote: post #3

Not exactly news that linkedin does this...

I tend to keep abreast of tech-related news and had not seen anything outlining this sort of behaviour. For me, the fact that they so blatantly suggest that people have a LinkedIn account when they don't is appalling. As I noted in my post, I am not in fact that surprised though.

It's like tech-news outlining that the yellow hits atop a google search are paid for. Why this is on the front page of HN I have no idea.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#48

Post by StavrosK »

blumkvist wrote: post #32
weixiyen wrote: post #24

Really surprised by all the comments here. This seems like a solid business decision by LinkedIn, riding the line of what a user is willing to accept and balancing it well with the potential rewards. Look at every famous company and you'll find tactics that you don't agree with, and sometimes downright illegal (Path). If you're not willing to do desperate things, to do what is necessary for user acquisition, good luc…

I've tried to explain this line of logic previously on HN and my experience is that the majority of the people here live in their own world. Much like people who enjoy reality TV, just more technically savvy. They babble about how FB decreases audience reach or how they hide their ad targeting instead of realizing the massive opportunity that is presented to the people who are willing to put the work. They besmirch g…

That's because people usually put "morality" over "success of a business, even mine", and that's the world I want to live in. Your world has slaves (they're good business, after all).

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#49

Post by kaivi »

I have used my Gmail box since early beta, and most definitely, a fraction of people I have ever contacted are no longer alive. There is no way for me or for LinkedIn to determine that. They may use an aggressive strategy to get new sign-ups, but that's just their way of shoveling money. Death is natural and inevitable, and I believe that we must raise people's awareness of it. I'd say deal with it and don't ever let the reality offend you.

Here is a good speculation from xkcd on a related topic: https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/ With it in mind, how valuable would a database of the deceased be in 100 years from now, if we start gathering this data today? For example, mining the internet for history on relatives would probably become a business of it's own, and as a consequence, ancestor's deeds would be much less romanticized than they are today.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#50

Post by randunel »

Every website which uses facebook sign in has "list of friends" among permission requirements, and there's no way of going around that. Every product I worked on used those facebook lists to send invites and to create ghost accounts with pre-made connections :)

If I ever implement yahoo (or some other) oauth, I expect the requirements to be similar, eg 'Ask for everything and create an account for everyone'. So I believe it's something that everyone does already, why would linkedin be so special?

Personally, I always use e-mail signup, no OAuth, due to not being able to reject certain permissions. And I never gave my e-mail password away to LinkedIn or other services who asked for it, back in the day. Had a client of mine wanted such a feature, they probably would have asked to store it, 'just in case' :)

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