

LinkedIn opts 100 million users into sharing information with ads - evilswan
http://news.yahoo.com/linkedin-opts-100-million-users-sharing-private-information-050409746.html

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pornel
There would be no outrage if they simply put "we'll share all your stuff any
way we want" on page 74 of EULA (if they haven't already).

At least URL for this setting is nice:

<https://www.linkedin.com/settings/social-advertising>

There are other settings you might want to opt out of:

<https://www.linkedin.com/settings/enhanced-advertising>

<https://www.linkedin.com/settings/data-sharing>

~~~
nodata
and here is the link to close your account:
[https://www.linkedin.com/secure/settings?closemyaccountstart...](https://www.linkedin.com/secure/settings?closemyaccountstart=)

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click170
I have not once ever felt appreciative of being opted-in to something.

If I want it, _I_ will opt-in. If I don't opt-in, that should be taken as an
explicit opt-out. Why do so many sites go the other route, tarnishing their
reputations (IMO) in the process?

~~~
untog
For money- and while you might think it has tarnished their reputation, I
guarantee that 90% of users have no idea about what's going on.

~~~
AgentConundrum
> _I guarantee that 90% of users have no idea about what's going on._

Maybe so, but I took the added step of sending a link to an article about this
to every one of my connections. It's a step I often don't bother with, but
somehow this one pushed me past my indifference and made me take action. I
think it's that I so rarely use LinkedIn, yet still vaguely feel like I should
have one, being in a so called "profession". At least with Facebook, I check
in pretty much every day so I notice changes and I keep up to date with
potential security issues and know I have to spend time maintaining my privacy
settings. With LinkedIn, I just let my account sit in the background and do
whatever it is that it does when I'm not around. Being notified that they're
doing some shady things when I'm not looking bothers me more than average, so
I took steps that were more than my average.

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palish
Wow, that was extremely annoying to disable.

\- I didn't remember my password offhand, so each of my 5 attempts required me
to fill out a captcha.

\- On the settings page, the "Account" link is... less than visible. The word
"Account" appears ~4 times on the page. One of them was a link entitled
"Manage Account Settings", which you'd think would be it, but no --- that led
to a FAQ.

This was done without my knowledge or consent. Not that I can do anything but
post an HN comment, though...

~~~
ig1
You could delete your linkedin account

~~~
mrspeaker
Or, a less drastic approach is still be on Linked In and now know they are a
bunch of arsehats who aren't to be trusted with your personal data so make
sure you delete everything that doesn't directly give you value.

You then move them way down in your list of admired companies and actively
badmouth them whenever it's appropriate - with the long term goal that this
information will spread, hopefully ruining the value of being on the network
to the point where it is no longer a useful resource and THEN delete your
profile.

That's what I'm going to do.

~~~
untog
Actually, I think LinkedIn is a very interesting case for this kind of
behaviour. I have long since removed a lot of personal information from my
Facebook account because everyone on there is _already_ my friend, and anyone
who wants my phone number can just ask me for it.

However, LinkedIn contains a great deal of discovery and connection with
people you don't know- if you removed your work history etc. then the site
isn't going to be as much use to you. It isn't anywhere near as easy.

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bengl3rt
Yikes! I find myself using LinkedIn less and less these days as it seems
people just add each other indiscriminately so the "curated" feeling gets
lost. I think their design has also not aged well.

Happily, I got an invite to Careers 2.0, and I love both the look of it and
the information they choose to display. It's very well thought out - kudos to
the Stack* team! I realize it's not a networking site on the same sense as
LinkedIn, but it turns out I wasn't using LI that way anyway - just using the
profile page as an easily likable online version of my résumé.

Shameless plug: <http://careers.stackoverflow.com/bengl3rt>

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suprgeek
Unfortunately this rings truer every day "If you're not paying for something,
you're not the customer; you're the product being sold"

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yumraj
Perhaps it is just me but that check box was not checked by default for me. I
don't remember doing anything specific and am not a paid subscriber.

The only thing I vaguely remember is setting this "Turn on/off enhanced
advertising" to OFF sometime ago. So, it possible that this only happend for
users who had accepted "enhanced advertising".

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cbs
>There would be no outrage if they simply put "we'll share all your stuff any
way we want"

There would still be outrage, it would just be outrage over burning users with
sleazy practices. There would just be no outrage on HN because burrying
something in the EULA that nobody ever reads is legally OK and therefore
morally OK too.

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Aloisius
Unless I'm missing something, they don't seem to send any of the data to
advertisers as they host the ads themselves. It is just a ad template that has
{user_photo} and {other_users} in it.

I saw something similar on Facebook ages ago.

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parfe
Playstation network will be doing something similar today.

 _If you are in the United States or Canada, effective August 11, 2011, we
will change the marketing options to allow Sony Computer Entertainment America
("SCEA") and SNEA to market to you about Sony Group of Companies' products and
services._

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va_coder
easy solution: use social media to sell money making things and keep personal
stuff out

