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LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

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Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#51
post #50

Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't…

I've always been puzzled by people who hate on recruiters contacting them through LinkedIn. If you dislike it so much, why don't you delete your LinkedIn profile? It's obviously there to facilitate exactly this kind of behaviour, so I don't see why there's any issue around it. To the contrary, I see these kinds of complaints as being a common form of humblebragging in the developer community. It comes across as: 'Gos…

There's no way getting contacted by recruiters (most of whom aren't reputable if they've got to resort to cold contacting via Linked In) is humblebragging. It's a total pain in the ass and I shouldn't have to delete my linked in account just to prevent it happening. In fact, recruiters that abuse Linked in like this should have their accounts deleted.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#52
post #45

I logged into Linkedin recently for the first time in a while, and I was APPALLED to find that they had suggested the psychiatrist I saw during college for depression as a contact. They must have mined out her contacts info. This stuff is extremely sensitive and should be confidential, but Linkedin totally disregards that.

Hang on: why is your psychiatrist leaking identifiable information to anyone?

The problem there is the (criminal?) failings of the psychiatrist, not of the scummy behaviour of LinkedIn.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#54

Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't…

Not my experience. 90% of the recruiters who contact me (and I get a lot of mail) are for genuine, decent paying contract work - usually in the EUR450-500 day rate range.

You have to ignore the obnoxious stuff you don't like with LinkedIn and just treat it as a tool.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#55
post #47

For anyone talking about receiving too much LinkedIn spam it was revealed to me on HN that they actually have a do not contact list. I sent them an email listing off my email addresses a little while ago and they've honoured it. https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/

This same process did not work for me, at all. My dead relatives I emailed years ago are always in my recommendation list. I never connected to an external account, and have repeatedly tried to contact linkedin with no response. I'll gladly be a counterparty to this suit.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#56
post #50

Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't…

I've always been puzzled by people who hate on recruiters contacting them through LinkedIn. If you dislike it so much, why don't you delete your LinkedIn profile? It's obviously there to facilitate exactly this kind of behaviour, so I don't see why there's any issue around it. To the contrary, I see these kinds of complaints as being a common form of humblebragging in the developer community. It comes across as: 'Gos…

I thought the purpose was to keep a list of professional contacts I know.

I don't expect to be contacted by recruiters I've never met before on an almost hourly basis during the week.

For my company, this is a genuine nuisance and most of our phone calls are from clueless recruiters offering candidates that don't even have the skills we're looking for.

Even if we needed a recruiter, I'd hardly choose one that called out of the blue. It's getting to the stage where we have to put warnings for recruiters not to contact us because we get so many it's harming our productivity.

So that's why I hate on it.

As an employer, I can say I've never had a good recruitment experience even outside of this situation.

However, I don't expect them to stop any time soon. If this is also a problem for anyone here, the best result is to quickly politely tell them you're not interested. Perhaps ask where they saw your details. Put a note there. Don't stay on the phone for the inevitable questions they've been trained to ask to keep you on the phone. Just say no if you value your time.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#57
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been puzzled by people who hate on recruiters contacting them through LinkedIn. If you dislike it so much, why don't you delete your LinkedIn profile? It's obviously there to facilitate exactly this kind of behaviour, so I don't see why there's any issue around it. To the contrary, I see these kinds of complaints as being a common form of humblebragging in the developer community. It comes across as: 'Gos…

I thought the purpose was to keep a list of professional contacts I know. I don't expect to be contacted by recruiters I've never met before on an almost hourly basis during the week. For my company, this is a genuine nuisance and most of our phone calls are from clueless recruiters offering candidates that don't even have the skills we're looking for. Even if we needed a recruiter, I'd hardly choose one that called…

Just to follow on from this... perhaps to understand my acrimony, people from outside the UK might be interested to know that at times it seems as if we have an economy powered by an army of unskilled 'service sector professionals' calling the entire population trying to sell recruitment, utilities and PPI claims.

For many of us 'Were you mis-sold PPI?" is almost a daily question via SMS.

The sad thing is that at some level it must work.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#58
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty early career(graduated in 2012) and even I get harassed on the regular. Maybe they bother younger people more because they think we're less expensive(which is generally true) but the only "legit" linkedin recruiters I ever heard from seemed like Google/FB/Palantir/etc"spam every graduating CS kid in x region" as an invitation to apply rather than a normal "recruiting for a specific opening" type thing. May…

You probably should develop a different attitude for you own benefit. You are just starting out and the shit recruiter today may very well progress in their career (perhaps they are even a newbie to recruiting) and you may need them down the road. Even if annoying, no sense to burn bridges. You can always be polite and keep the door open. Your job prospects may be good today but not in 5 or 10 years. As far as "haras…

I disagree. You're anonymous to these guys, you're just another possible lead. When you're further down the road, these guys will continue to try any means to talk to you no matter what - even if you write 'Recruiters - Please don't contact me' all over your profile.

It's not a sincere relationship at all - they're just trawling through their latest LinkedIn Premium search.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely true. I don't think I burn bridges(and the statement on linkedin isn't "no recruiters pls" it's more like "I am happily employed"). I don't angrily reply or anything. Also sure I wouldn't like it if people said I was harassing them with my resume, but I wouldn't be. These people send the same posts over and over to the same people(who, by their linkedin are clearly employed). I have no idea if they…

(and the statement on linkedin isn't "no recruiters pls" it's more like "I am happily employed") I have no idea if they're good at recruiting, I just don't want another job. Right now. Ten years is a long time, though. There's also a good chance you'll be a completely different person in five. And since your employer has no loyalty to you whatsoever, you may be looking for a new job in even less time. There's no poss…

"There's no possible downside in letting recruiters email you."

Totally agree. Over the years I've seen many variations of this. "serious inquiries only" used to be a staple of some classifieds back when people did classified. Essentially people that don't want to be bothered because all they are thinking about is today and what their own needs are. (Of course I don't like to be bothered either and draw the line at certain things as well in some cases of course - I guess it's just where the line is).

One thing I picked up in "this business" back in the 90's was that seemingly important people (VC's for example) wanted to talk to everybody and anybody since they never knew going forward who might be the next star out of the newbies.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#60
post #50

Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't…

I've always been puzzled by people who hate on recruiters contacting them through LinkedIn. If you dislike it so much, why don't you delete your LinkedIn profile? It's obviously there to facilitate exactly this kind of behaviour, so I don't see why there's any issue around it. To the contrary, I see these kinds of complaints as being a common form of humblebragging in the developer community. It comes across as: 'Gos…

Agreed. Complaining that you are spammed with potential job offers is like complaining about how expensive it is to replace the high-performance tires on your Porsche. Please don't forget that there is still high unemployment across the US and abroad.
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