Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed - this is the assumption I have been working on and experienced too
The article noted that this was also happening for email contacts who were not on Linked In.
What about a third person, e.g., a mutual friend.
LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
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Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#12I vouch for this claim that LinkedIn/Facebook seem to give recommendations to add someone as friend even when there is no chance that they could figure it out using data they have. I don't understand why browsers can't sandbox each tab such that there is no way to share cookies or cache. This is a serious breach of privacy if they are reading friend relationships based on your gmail open in other tabs.
It would not surprise me if one of their signals for recommendations is whether that party has viewed your profile.
Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#13Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#14I assumed this was happening through their acquisition of Rapportive and all the authorized Gmail plugins that came with that. But this... this is sneaky.
Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#15"We are not doing this to invade your privacy, we are doing this to assist you in growing your network."
Well if they are in my Gmail contacts they are already part of "my network." I can reach out and contact any of these people by simply sending them an email.
Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#16If you know about browser security, you know that was is being described is just not possible. Likely that the author had authorized some google importer or something, but simply visiting 2 different websites in 2 tabs would not allow this. Just imagine the insanity if it was possible for another site to read from another tab.
Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#17See LinkedIn Dark Patterns [0]. It explains how LinkedIn tricks one into sharing contacts.
There we have it, finally signed up and signed in to
LinkedIn. The next part of the new user experience is filling
out your profile. Depending on how you count, LinkedIn tries to
import the user’s address book three to eight times. It
shouldn’t be this hard to sign up for a product without giving
away any unnecessary information.
[0] https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae...
Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#18This drives me absolutely nuts. It makes me want to delete my LinkedIn account.
It's stories like these I refer to when I'm asked why I don't have an account.
Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#19groan...grabs pitchfork
But seriously though, why does LinkedIn refuse to learn time and time again? There's a line between being aggressive and being outright dishonest and the line isn't all that hard to determine. Uber is often aggressive but rarely are they dishonest in their practices (at least not egregiously from what I know). But at this point LinkedIn is the leader in practices like this and it's not all that clear to me that it's a great long term strategy.
Re: LinkedIn accesses Gmail contacts via ‘auto-authorization’
#20Can someone explain how the hell this is even possible? Surely a random website can't read any other random website's session data? Is Google cooperating somehow?