LinkedIn Customers Allege Company Hacked E-Mail Addresses • Hacker News Board

Re: LinkedIn Customers Allege Company Hacked E-Mail Addresses

#31

Post by tedunangst » Sat, Sep 21, 2013, 1:27 PM UTC

kibibu wrote: post #27

logicallee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to detract from the main point of this thread (which I agree with) but do you mind sharing why you write "catastrophically" embarrassing? And caused 'a lot of grief'? I'd never think twice about getting a linkedin invite email from anyone who for any reason has ever emailed me (ever). It's obviously automatic... I really can't think of an exception...

> Your Ex has sent you an invitation to LinkedIn. Would you like to endorse their skills?

If that is the worst thing that happens to you, you should be thanking LinkedIn for teaching you a valuable lesson about typing your email password into random forms on the Internet (or sharing passwords).

Re: LinkedIn Customers Allege Company Hacked E-Mail Addresses

#32

Post by tedunangst » Sat, Sep 21, 2013, 1:51 PM UTC

yorak wrote: post #24

dror wrote: post #18

Here's how they do it. Various times Linkedin provides me with a form to "import" my contacts from my gmail account. This dialog looks very similar to the login form to the site. If you use the same password for both sites (I don't), you might be thinking that you're logging in, when in fact you're bringing in everyone in your address book. Not sure, if they then automatically spam everyone on your list or not. Linke…

Also, I recently found out that Android app from Linkedin extracts your gmail contacts. From what I could gather, you cannot opt-out. I was quite annoyed by this. I also see this a more probable explanation to contact harvesting than hacking to email accounts.

Do you know this because installing the app requested permission? The android security model is all or nothing, up front. If anyone ever would want the app to access their contacts, the app is required to demand that permission from every user at installation.

Re: LinkedIn Customers Allege Company Hacked E-Mail Addresses

#33

Post by jmathai » Sat, Sep 21, 2013, 2:15 PM UTC

uladzislau wrote: post #7

jmathai wrote: post #3

I'm not sure how LinkedIn does it but their "recommendations" are very spooky. I get some really odd ones like the property manager we pay rent to. I've only ever emailed or called him. I presume he gave LinkedIn access to his email contact list but based on the number of these creepy recommendations a lot of people I email with must do it. Even more spooky are the recommendations to connect with people I don't know…

LinkedIn does that by cross referencing cookies, contact lists, email addresses. The same way Facebook does. People just used to expect more integrity from LinkedIn.

They've been doing this for a while....

Re: LinkedIn Customers Allege Company Hacked E-Mail Addresses

#34

Post by city41 » Sat, Sep 21, 2013, 4:15 PM UTC

logicallee wrote: post #22

city41 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the latter happen to me and so have several other people here on HN. LinkedIn ended up sending an invite to everyone I had ever emailed. It was catastrophically embarrassing and caused a lot of grief.

Not to detract from the main point of this thread (which I agree with) but do you mind sharing why you write "catastrophically" embarrassing? And caused 'a lot of grief'? I'd never think twice about getting a linkedin invite email from anyone who for any reason has ever emailed me (ever). It's obviously automatic... I really can't think of an exception...

There are more email addresses lingering inside your email account than you probably realize. I just did a search for "LinkedIn sorry" to find all the apologies I sent out. 38 of them. All to complete and total strangers. When it first started happening I did some digging and found the connection for a lot of these people is we were on a common mailing list.

Not to mention the more obvious ones like ex-girlfriends, ex-bosses (including one I am not on good terms with), companies that I applied to and did not end up working for, etc. This is my gmail account, it has every email I've ever sent in the past 9 years. There's a lot of stuff in there.

EDIT: I don't know if LinkedIn still does this, but at the time LinkedIn would send reminder emails for any ignored invites. Which just compounded the problem.

Re: LinkedIn Customers Allege Company Hacked E-Mail Addresses

#35

Post by phyalow » Sat, Sep 21, 2013, 9:53 PM UTC

kibibu wrote: post #27

logicallee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to detract from the main point of this thread (which I agree with) but do you mind sharing why you write "catastrophically" embarrassing? And caused 'a lot of grief'? I'd never think twice about getting a linkedin invite email from anyone who for any reason has ever emailed me (ever). It's obviously automatic... I really can't think of an exception...

> Your Ex has sent you an invitation to LinkedIn. Would you like to endorse their skills?

Your Ex has endorsed you for "Family Planning".