
LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit - salemh
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-13/linkedin-ordered-to-face-customer-e-mail-contacts-lawsuit.html
======
waterfowl
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 imagine
any legitimate "superstars" actually respond to these folks.

Edit: the really awkward thing is when it starts recommending you one night
stands from years ago just because you may have at some point exchanged an
email.

~~~
jval
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: 'Gosh, isn't it
tough being contacted by these recruiters all the time because my skills are
under such high demand in the labor marketplace. Deleting that one email every
few weeks sure does some serious damage to my psychological well-being.'

The substance of this article is about email spam generated by LinkedIn
itself. I think we should focus on that, and on the broader issue of where the
limits are for email invitations in web applications. The issue this has
highlighted (for me at least) is that it is easy to do damage to the
reputations for others by putting their names on emails they didn't ask to be
sent. This doesn't just mean losing users, it actually means souring and
sometimes ruining the valuable relationships that users have with their
colleagues and friends. There's a lot of trust and power inherent when someone
else's name is put on an email and that isn't something to be sneezed at.

~~~
bendtheblock
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.

~~~
bendtheblock
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.

------
Zelphyr
LinkedIn is a classic example of how a company must shift from serving their
customer to serving their investors after they go public.

They used to be a very useful service.[1] But the closer they got to their IPO
the more the started doing things that were clearly in the best interest of
generating more page views regardless of how valuable those things were to
their users. To my mind this lawsuit was brought about because of that very
behavior.

1: Not accounting for the recruiters who have plagued it. Something LinkedIn
could probably deal with but they don't want to because that would affect page
views.

~~~
MichaelGG
Presumably they try to drive up page views in order to make more revenue. Are
you saying that they wouldn't do the same if they were still privately held?

Maybe after their IPO the thought is that they're no longer going to get
magical money raining down on them, so they actually have to try to generate
more profit?

Although it must be hard for people with option grants when there's a P/E
approaching 1000 and you need the price to keep going up to do well.

~~~
Zelphyr
I'm saying they drive up page views in ways that are independent of the value
those things provide to their users.

I'm not against increasing revenue. I'm against scanning my contacts list
without my permission so they can invite my friends. What value does this
provide to me? None. What value does it provide to them? A ton because if even
a small percentage of my contacts signs up then LinkedIn has just increased
page views and thus, revenue.

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ciderpunx
Hope that LinkedIn lose that suit. I had tonnes of people with me in their
address book bombarding me with LinkedIn invitations - it'd make me feel
better about that.

------
prezjordan
My favorite LinkedIn feature is how invitations are not sent by linkedin.com,
but your friend/colleague/etc. This way, marking it as spam doesn't hurt them.

I had to go through several rounds of customer support to get my information
off of their site. "You don't have an account" they would repeat - of course I
don't, which is why it bothers me that I still get invitations and show up in
your "recommended" lists.

Not to mention the fake endorsements.

~~~
sbov
There's protections against this sort of thing that major isps implement. You
can't just set your from address to whatever you want. Well you can, but it
would be likely be rejected, or at least wouldn't reach your target's inbox.

~~~
MichaelGG
SPF allows you to fake the From header, so long your Return-Path is your own
domain and passes checks. DMARC can pass if SPF passes. To end users, there's
no discernible difference when there's another Return-Path domain.

DKIM does allow you to force the From header to be signed, so hopefully
that'll continue to pick up steam. It does break some things, like some
mailing lists, and that probably contributes to why it's taken so long to get
such things going. There's also a lot of "business critical" software out
there that just assumes it can send as any user.

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001sky
_While Koh agreed to throw out claims based on federal wiretap and stored
communications claims, she said LinkedIn may have violated California’s right
of publicity, which protects against the appropriation of someone’s name or
likeness, without their consent, for commercial purposes._

------
6cxs2hd6
From the article I understand the suit is by LinkedIn members whose contact
book was (in their opinion) abused to send these invitation emails to non-
members. On the face of it that's a reasonable claim and seems they should
prevail.

But also: How about the recipients -- who are getting repeated unsolicited
commercial emails? How does this activity not violate CAN-SPAM? Shouldn't
LinkedIn be subject to fines?

Edit: Although I don't terribly mind the downvote, especially if it was
accidental -- I did read the whole article and had a genuine question.

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1___1
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.

~~~
DanBC
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.

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Kequc
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/](https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/)

~~~
o0-0o
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.

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phkahler
Linked-In used to put up a message wanting to "verify" my email address and
ask for a password. I made it a point to never ever give them my email
password because I thought they'd help themselves. Anyone know if they do? I
also gave my linked-in account it's own password in case they might try do
something crappy like trying to get at my email assuming its the same
password. It's not just them, half the apps on Google Play want access to my
contacts, texts, and/or location - stuff the app itself has no use for.

~~~
cyber
Ideally, you should be using a unique password at every site. There are plenty
of secure password storage tools to help you keep track.

That way, even if there is a site breach, your other accounts are not at risk.

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bhhaskin
Its about time LinkedIn got call on this. They have been doing this for years.

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suyash
LinkedIn is the worst offender when it comes to SPAM. I've turned off all
possible settings to recive 0 emails still get multiple messages everyday :(

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adwordsjedi
I'd appreciate if they let me unsubscribe from their damn emails on a catch
all account where I get a former employee's emails. They make you log-in to
opt out and I'm not about to reset the guy's password in case he still uses
linkedin.

~~~
aendruk
They don't make you log in. Use this form [1] and they'll blacklist your email
address system-wide [2]. Be sure to include any spelling variations (e.g. an
optional dot) that may be in your contacts' address books:

    
    
      Please add my email addresses to the Do Not Contact List:
      
      andrew@example.com
      and.rew@example.com
      throwaway@example.com
      
      Thank you,
      
      Andrew
    

I did this in April and haven't since received anything but a confirmation
from their customer support.

[1]:
[https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/dnca](https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/dnca)

[2]:
[https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/](https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/)

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nevi-me
I used to be on LinkedIn, but deleted my profile a year and half ago. I still
get e-mails about invitations from people who know me, and whenever I choose
to unsubscribe from them, I still get them.

The scary thing is that when you click through the link to confirm, they used
to ask you to 'change a password' implying that a ghost account in your name
already exists. I just checked it now, and it just offers me to create an
account instead.

------
J_Darnley
While it may be a worthwhile case my solution to the few linkedin emails I
received was to mark them as spam and move on.

~~~
BSousa
I had to create a rule in gmail. Marking them as spam didn't seem to work too
well and still a lot slipped through. Now anything that has linkedin.com in
subject, from, to, and body is automatically deleted.

~~~
smtddr
That's going to cause problems for you one day. Some people put their LinkedIn
in their signatures.

~~~
BSousa
Maybe, but to be honest, haven't had one complain of not replying to emails
yet (Except from recruiters).

Maybe I'm just not involved in a lot of circles with folks that do that
(looking at signatures of most of my emails, most just have name, email and
phone)

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misingnoglic
I don't know how many times I've accidentally sent emails to random people
asking them to join LinkedIn because the button looks like the one for
connecting with someone already on the site, two different things.

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darkhorn
Relevant
[http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/27yldl/snoop_find_infor...](http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/27yldl/snoop_find_informations_about_an_email_owner/)

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vjvj
As much as I rely on LinkedIn they have a HORRIBLE approach to user privacy.
Hope they get hit hard and learn a lesson.

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cma
It's a virus with a EULA.

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jwheeler79
eat it linkedin. You're a bunch of shitty jerks.

