

LinkedIn's sleazy invite tactics - codezy

The other day I popped on to LinkedIn to look at a profile and there was an input for my email and password, which I thought was weird as I thought I was logged in. Anyways, I entered my password and email again and hit OK.  Well it turns out this was an import from contacts box that they just happened to make look very much like a login.  Anyhow on the first screen it prompted me to invite some folks so I selected 3 of them and hit ok, thinking I was done that, I hit ok again accidentally, and low and behold, it emailed every single person that I had ever emailed.  We are talking clients, co-workers, friends, even kids who had sent in support requests for one of our games.  Now - I probably deserve some blame for not paying enough attention, but at the same point, why would you dress up some major function like this to look like a login box. So that was bad.  But what is worse, it decided without asking me, to send yet another batch reminding people who had not signed up and there is no apparent way to turn this off.  Anyhow, be warned.  <i>Not sure if this is worse than them defaulting to using your photos in ads</i>
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cmos
The exact same thing happened to me. Non technical family members whom I
hadn't contacted in years were now excited to join this 'linkedin' thing. That
goddam company made it look like I was reaching out to people I haven't talked
to in years, creating awkward situations and making two weeks of my life far
more stressful than they should have.

They even had some buttons to 'retract' the emails, but all those did was kill
the link in all the emails sent out, creating another wave of emails from
family members 'hey, the link is dead'.

I deleted my linkedin account and have not looked back. I strongly encourage
everyone to do the same.

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dgunn
I had to report LinkedIn as spam in gmail because no amount of unsubscribing
would stop them from spamming me. I have an account already but they refuse to
leave me alone about it. Their tactics for most things are just sleazy. They
only see their users as ways of getting more users. I'm not a fan. Although I
still have an account, so I guess I'm not that upset.

LinkedIn should thank gmail for having such a good spam filter. Without it,
they probably would have lost me as a user. :)

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notahacker
Yeah, my dad has spent the last few days incandescent with rage at a system
which (presumably via deceptive opt in) seems to have emailed everyone he's
ever been involved in email correspondence with, which he thinks includes a
number of people on cc chains he doesn't even know.

So basically, instead of welcoming someone who fits smack bang in the middle
of their ideal demographic (self-employed professional with specialist
expertise and a lot of old contacts but no time or inclination to go to
networking events) they've got a phantom account with over 100 connections but
no intention of using the service ever again.

I remember another site that grew very big on this invite model. AOL wasted
half a billion on Bebo.

Time to start shorting their stock whilst reporting their emails as spam.

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singlow
> I probably deserve some blame for not paying enough > attention

Well, I have been annoyed by this before as well. While I would not blame you
for not paying attention, I will blame you for something worse: using the same
password on LinkedIn that you use for your email account.

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soho33
hahahah we both posted the same comment at the same time! Kudos

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abbasmehdi
Have you noticed post-IPO and post acquisition products start to suck?
Huffington Post used to be a favorite, until AOL took over. LinkedIn is
turning into a spam machine.

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km3k
So that's why I've been getting some random linkedin invites from people I
don't remember or people I e-mailed once! Good to know I can ignore them.

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soho33
what is bad is you using the same password for your email and linkedin
account!!

