Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin • Hacker News Board

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#31

Post by 300bps » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 12:09 PM UTC

The worst part is that LinkedIn will sell this information to anyone. There are several sites out there that allow you to put a Javascript snippet onto your page and thereby know the real names and any other details LinkedIn has for any "anonymous" website visitor to your site. One of my side programming jobs is a company that does Internet marketing and he had me put the snippet on all of his sites - it literally shocked me when I saw people's real names coming through the stats, all because they remained logged in to LinkedIn.

I generally only log in to LinkedIn with Internet Explorer now. It's the only site that I use Internet Explorer for.

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#32

Post by Gmo » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 12:24 PM UTC

dkarapetyan wrote: post #3

If you don't have a linkedin account I highly recommend the experience of setting one up. It is horrible. You are upsold at every step of the process. Reminded at every step that you should import your contacts and just forced to use horrible defaults every step of the way. After you have an account you'd think the sane defaults would be to not spam you with every little thing that happens on the site. Nope, you manu…

As mentioned elsewhere, there is Viadeo.

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#33

Post by pm90 » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 12:34 PM UTC

weavie wrote: post #18

dkarapetyan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is completely useless in the sense that you can do the same thing with a simple blog and json file for your resume. The reason people use it is because it is an extremely simple way to showcase a professional profile in a place where every recruiter and their grandma knows is full of professional profiles. It would be very easy to build an alternative. The hard part would be amassing the critical mass of recruiter…

Interesting. So do people get head hunted on Linked In? I always ignore any requests from recruiters. Maybe I should take my profile more seriously?

I didn't take linkedin seriously until I lost my job. Having an upto date profile on LinkedIn does 2 things: * lets recruiters see everything about you in one place * suggests related jobs

Now, the story of how I got my current job: met guy at local Meetup, talked to him a bit and found out the company was hiring, and he would mention my name to recruiter. So, I add him on linkedIn, but get no call whatsoever from any recruiter. I see that there's a company recruiter on his connections and add her; explaining that I had met so and so at a meetup and there is an opening for a person with my skills so would she be kind enough to set me an interview? It takes some time, but I do get the interview, clear it, and all the other interviews as well.

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#34

Post by ExpiredLink » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 12:38 PM UTC

grimman wrote: post #13

ExpiredLink wrote: post #12

> So a little advice - if you prefer privacy don't forget to sign out of your Linkedin account before browsing the Web. ... and, of course, also sign out of Google and any other online service you are logged in!

It's usually around this time I plug Self Destructing Cookies ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct... ); it simply nukes any cookies that aren't whitelisted. Edit: For Firefox

> it simply nukes any cookies that aren't whitelisted.

Probably not what you want in case of e.g. Google.

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#35

Post by emmelaich » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 12:46 PM UTC

I get an email to invite me to connect to someone every time (only three times so far) I merely visit their LinkedIn profile. I thought at first they had some premium feature but on second thoughts it was probably something like this. I never have myself logged in to LinkedIn at the same time.

Backstory: An acquaintance of mine requested a connection soon after I met them for the first time. I was a little wary so didn't accept before speaking to them.

I found out later that it was a fake profile copied from his real one and they were a victim of identity theft.

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#36

Post by emmelaich » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 12:51 PM UTC

weavie wrote: post #18

dkarapetyan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is completely useless in the sense that you can do the same thing with a simple blog and json file for your resume. The reason people use it is because it is an extremely simple way to showcase a professional profile in a place where every recruiter and their grandma knows is full of professional profiles. It would be very easy to build an alternative. The hard part would be amassing the critical mass of recruiter…

Interesting. So do people get head hunted on Linked In? I always ignore any requests from recruiters. Maybe I should take my profile more seriously?

Yep. I got an interview day with Google partly because I had a bit of bait (not entirely untrue) on my LinkedIn profile.

Didn't get the job -- at least not yet :) But it was an interesting exercise.

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#37

Post by coldpie » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 1:01 PM UTC

steven2012 wrote: post #9

I recently got access to a LinkedIn recruiter-level account, and it's frightening how much information recruiters have about someone. Not only can they look at anyone's linkedin profile, there are additional services (not affiliated with linkedin... I think) that keep a copy of everyone's linkedin profile, even if you delete it. They cross reference your linkedin profile with meetup, facebook, etc, to get an ultimate…

Reminder that most or all of that information was volunteered by the stalkee. If the information isn't put on the web in the first place, it can't be found. Be careful with what you make public, folks. If you put it on the web, it is as good as public.

(Obviously this doesn't apply for things like shopping profiles, but probably that's not what you were talking about.)

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#38

Post by dhotson » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 1:01 PM UTC

steven2012 wrote: post #9

I recently got access to a LinkedIn recruiter-level account, and it's frightening how much information recruiters have about someone. Not only can they look at anyone's linkedin profile, there are additional services (not affiliated with linkedin... I think) that keep a copy of everyone's linkedin profile, even if you delete it. They cross reference your linkedin profile with meetup, facebook, etc, to get an ultimate…

I found it a little bit ironic that one of the companies protesting NSA surveillance and collection of user data.. was LinkedIn.

https://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#39

Post by coldpie » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 1:03 PM UTC

ExpiredLink wrote: post #12

> So a little advice - if you prefer privacy don't forget to sign out of your Linkedin account before browsing the Web. ... and, of course, also sign out of Google and any other online service you are logged in!

I actually use Firefox's private browsing feature for browsing untrusted websites. That combined with NoScript should keep me quite (but obviously not entirely) anonymous.

Re: Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin

#40

Post by peteretep » Mon, Oct 13, 2014, 1:11 PM UTC

dkarapetyan wrote: post #11

peteretep wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know about you but if there was some other > network for professionals to showcase profiles I would > jump on that immediately XING?

Neat. Why is it limited to Germany?

    > Neat. Why is it limited to Germany?

It's ... not?