
LinkedIn is ignoring user settings - pmlnr
https://petermolnar.net/linkedin-public-settings-ignored/
======
chimen
2 months ago I signed up for a 30 day trial to search for people to hire and
then 140 eu/mo if I decide to continue using it.

Of course I forgot to stop it (they were pretty quiet also) and they charged
me 1400+ eu for a full year because...why not - no refunds (that's what their
page says).

I know, I know...should have read the whole shebang. Lost 1400 euros for
something I didn't really use. I was about to pay for a month and discontinue
but now I feel robbed. I do websites myself and I write in `bold - caps - red`
when I'm about to charge someone for a full year.

Shady tactics.

~~~
rabboRubble
My credit card company offers a way to generate a one-time credit card number
so that I can safely _trial_ a service and have the monthly charges stop after
one month. If I want to continue the service, I can provide my real static
credit card number.

~~~
ddebernardy
That's awesome, but it unfortunately won't help when a company charges for a
full year in advance like LinkedIn does.

~~~
Ixio
Mine also let's you chose a maximum amount that can be charged to the
temporary card number. I usually add 10% or 20% extra to the expected amount
so that unexpected taxes or shipping costs don't block the whole transaction.

I really love the feeling of safety that I get from chosing the max amount,
being sure that I won't be overcharged.

~~~
alextheparrot
I love the points I get from my current cards, but what card is this actually?
This sounds like a really killer card I’d use frequently for these use cases.

~~~
Ixio
The service I was writing about is French: [http://www.service-
virtualis.com/virtualis/index.htm](http://www.service-
virtualis.com/virtualis/index.htm)

So unfortunately if you get points I'm guessing you're from North America and
probably won't be able to apply.

I haven't searched but there might be such services available to you in a
nearer bank.

~~~
baud147258
Thank you for the link (I'm French too), but my bank (BNP) is not on the list
:'(

------
lordnacho
LinkedIn is a weird, weird place.

There's always people wanting to add me, but then they mostly don't introduce
themselves. Even half of the recruiters who add me don't do an intro. How is
that networking?

The articles seem pretty low quality. Sorry to say it, but a lot of them seem
to be written as a form of homework, as in "you should write something to be
seen". There's rarely any insightful comments on news pieces either.

And then there's Oleg. Doing a parody of him is basically the only form of
humour on LinkedIn. Do you agree?

The endorsements system is messed up. My 6th grade teacher endorsed me for
"derivatives" and "investment". That's not quite the same as a colleague or a
manager, is it? But you won't know unless you check all those links.

The one thing it's good for is as a replacement for a rolodex. No need to have
business cards anymore, you have LinkedIn.

~~~
tnolet
LinkedIn is going the MySpace way. Total crap “content”, endless amount of
people that indeed just want “connect” without intro, reason or anything else
than bumping their numbers. Weird thing, I found it pretty useful up to 2
years ago. I guess that’s when the influencers takeover and bullshit blogging
began.

~~~
praneshp
God, you should see the number of 20 line posts, each line in a paragraph by
itself, about how someone hired someone that others wouldn't. I agree with you
about the 2 years/influencers thing.

~~~
gnicholas
Yeah, I think the platform is more popular among recruiters, which leads these
types of posts to become popular with likes/comments/arguments. I am genuinely
curious how they get tens of thousands of engagements though. I can't imagine
getting in public arguments about this stuff. Maybe it's a form of networking
for recruiters? To us outsiders, it's just plain bizarre.

------
vanderZwan
As a UX guy I have noticed so many dumb quirks, tiny inconsistencies and flat-
out design errors like:

\- URLs not being clickable or selectable in many contexts for no good reason

\- icon positions/sizes being off by a pixel between different pages

\- if you're typing a message in their mobile app, and the text input field
loses focus for whatever reason, _everything you typed in so far is erased_
(this was true a few years ago and I essentially "rage-quit" the LinkedIn app
after that)

... that I am absolutely convinced that their technology stack is a
Frankenstein's monster of different chunks of code and logic, with a similar-
enough skin on the outside for all of the parts to fool the managers (both
inside and outside LinkedIn) into believing the website works.

(I know, I know: in a way all software projects relying on other libraries are
Frankensteins, but you know what I'm talking about here: the parts don't even
fit together properly)

These kinds of "ignores its own rules" bits fits perfectly with that.

I really wonder what the internal culture of that company is. I bet there's a
lot of turnover, leading to this mess.

~~~
jdhn
Another UX guy here. Right after they did their redesign, I had an initial
phone screen where the interviewer asked if I had a portfolio. I told them
that it was on my Linkedin profile, and the interviewer said that he had
looked there first, but couldn't find it. I knew that I had put it on there,
so I went to LinkedIn to see if the recruiter had made a mistake..

About 2 minutes later, I figured out what had happened. The redesign had moved
the Contact & Personal Info section to the side of the screen, and by default
it was collapsed. Originally it was right under your profile picture & job
title, but for some reason they decided to move & hide it. Very strange.

~~~
SilasX
[deleted]

~~~
jdhn
This was actually my first time seeing and using the new UI. I (wrongly)
assumed that this person was using the old UI where the links were more
prominent.

------
wslh
I always think about LinkedIn as a "light scam". LinkedIn always pretended to
help businesses and employees but indeed they don't do anything special to
match people except for recruiters, which at the end it is enough with a
search. To put it straight, it is not a Tinder for business.

I tried many paid services like Ads, Premium, and API. They are subpar. I
recruit better via Reddit than via LinkedIn, you can post in a group with
hundreds of thousands and it is a ghost town when nobody pay attention. they
refuse API access for obvious uses, etc.

~~~
robinhood
Let's give the power back to users. Please someone create an open source
alternative, where everyone will contribute to do something __good __.

Wait. That was just a dream.

~~~
yeukhon
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

~~~
philipodonnell
I tried once, I don't think it will replace classic recruiting.

~~~
yeukhon
Yeah I don’t think so either. I actually think it’s great we are not floor
with a thousand recruitment here (mostly by staffing agencies). However, for
this relatively small but active community, this is one of the best things I
like about HN.

------
robinhood
I've hated Linkedin for years, but what's interesting is to understand why. I
think it's a mix of \- really, really bad UX resulting in an ugly product \-
the level of emptiness of the news feed, full of people talking about
respectful bosses and good work condition while quoting Steve Jobs (oh, the
irony) \- seeing people becoming apparently more successful than me (if I have
to be honest) \- the level of intrusiveness of the platform in general

Despite all that, I've been afraid of missing job opportunities if I left the
platform. And I don't know why, because I've only found one job through
Linkedin in 10 years.

I wish I had the guts to leave it entirely.

~~~
na85
What bothers me the most about LinkedIn is how vapid everyone seems to be.

Everone has a job title like 'dynamic individual searching for creative
opportunities' when they really mean unemployed. It's like a game where
everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that everyone else is
pretending too.

~~~
noarchy
> It's like a game where everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that
> everyone else is pretending too.

To be fair, that sounds a lot like job-hunting, in general. The whole process
can be filled with rituals meant to obfuscate the fact that you just want a
job.

~~~
JBlue42
Pretty much. When searching around for advice on how to market yourself on
LinkedIn, that sort of title, though full of shit, is what is recommended.

I wish I could have an alternate profile or A/B test. I think my current one
is detrimental to the job search because I list jobs going back 17 yrs vs my
resume which is tailored to my current field. With a second profile, I'd
narrow it down. Maybe I should do that anyway.

------
IgorPartola
I deleted my LinkedIn profile years ago. The amount of spam I was getting from
them was ridiculous (the owner of the pizza joint next door wants to add you,
etc.). The final straw was when someone pointed out to me that unless you keep
it up to date, it reflects poorly on you. And I had no interest in doing that.

~~~
visarga
I deleted mine too, but recently I wanted to see someone else's page and was
not allowed. Not even a detail shown without login.

~~~
kuschku
If your referrer is from Google, they actually do allow you to see public
detail.

So just override referrer header, and you'll see a lot more.

~~~
pmlnr
Doesn't work for me either, at least not with cURL.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
Don't forget that you have to misspell Referer.

~~~
pmlnr
!!!

I'm having a really bad day with typos and overlooking them. You are correct;
it does work with [https://google.com](https://google.com) as referrer. I'm
updating the entry.

EDIT aaand it stopped working. It was either a glitch or it will lock you out
after a few requests.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
It definitely locks you out after a few requests. In the past I built a
LinkedIn profile scraper, but they are really really good at locking down
their data. If you even somewhat appear to be a bot, you’re blocked.

~~~
flukus
Can it differentiate between a bot and a human opening up a dozen links in
tabs? I suspect the tumblr one can't, it appears to rate limit me for using
there archive pages.

------
sarreph
I'd like to see this issue get more attention. However, I did think this was
already known — anecdotally, I've not really been able to view _public_
profiles ≈50% of the time without hitting an auth-wall.

What I'd like to know more, is if LinkedIn tracks non-logged-in viewers
somehow. I have an inkling there's some kind of cookie-mongering taking place
that informs the person's profile that you viewed who you are (if they are
able to ascertain that). It's just an inkling, but strong enough to make sure
I'm always browsing others' profiles in Incognito.

~~~
justinclift
It's definitely a cookie wall of some sort.

On the computer I used to access LinkedIn from, I use two browsers. One for
general browsing, and one for "more sensitive content" (eg things with
passwords). I used to log into LinkedIn with the second one.

Trying to look at public LinkedIn profiles using the general browser (which
has no LinkedIn cookie) never works. Always shows the log-in-wall. Whereas
looking at the exact same profile (cut-n-pasting-the-url) using the browser-
used-for-secure-content did always work. 100% reproducible.

~~~
jeromegv
That is so odd. So I use Safari for general browsing. Typically use Chrome in
private window but rarely for general browsing (only sometimes). For a while I
would always check linkedin profiles from google private window and a google
search and it stopped working a few months ago (getting an auth wall). After
reading your message, I opened Firefox (which I never use), googled a name,
click on the linkedin name, and bang it worked!

~~~
justinclift
Weird. Yeah, no idea. Sounds like they have some other exceptions in place too
then. :)

On the other hand I don't use Google any more (mostly StartPage or DDG), which
is likely why I hadn't noticed the use-Google workaround.

------
kevinconaway
The issue at hand is how LinkedIn defines “public”. From the public profile
settings page the author linked:

> Select what shows via searches on Bing, Google, etc. as well as on public
> profile badges and permitted services like Outlook, when the viewers are not
> logged-in members or did not bind their LinkedIn account to their account on
> such services.

Its not anyone who isn’t logged in but rather a subset of unauthenticated
users who discover your profile through a specific set of avenues

Clicking on the informational icon next to “public” reinforces what they mean:

>All LinkedIn members as well as others who find you through search engines
(e.g. Google, Bing) or other servies.

~~~
detaro
I just tried googling the authors profile and got a login-wall coming from
Google though.

~~~
icebraining
Are you sure you're not running any browser extensions that might be blocking
the Referrer header? On fresh Chrome profile, I didn't get a login-wall from
Google, but I did get one coming directly to the URL.

------
petetnt
Sort of funny LinkedIn story: I was fed up with the recruiters constantly
contacting me without any relevance to the work I actually would like to do
(if I was looking for a job in the first place, which I am not as my profile
states). So I went ahead and changed my job descriptions to things like "The
theme for Fresh Prince Of Bel Air plays in the background" and I have now been
contacted about my Fresh Prince Of Bel Air skills twice.

~~~
userbinator
Those are the "spamcruiters" who just use bots to scrape the pages and
automate the whole process.

I don't use it myself but I've heard from others who have, several times,
received offers for jobs in _the company they were already working at_.

~~~
a3n
LinkedIn has suggested that I connect with addresses of mail lists.

------
kburman
If I remember correctly, Linkedin recently lost a court case where some
startup was scraping it's public data for analytics purpose. And pretty sure
LinkedIn didn't like that.

Edit: Heres the article about the court case.[Aug 15, 2017]
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-
ruling...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling/u-s-
judge-says-linkedin-cannot-block-startup-from-public-profile-data-
idUSKCN1AU2BV)

~~~
philipodonnell
I still hear a lot of complaints about this, has there been any confirmation
that LinkedIn changed anything at all?

------
ChuckMcM
There seems to be a relationship between 'not logged in' and 'not a LinkedIn
user'. I have found sometimes that a profile isn't visible (asks me to log in)
because at one time I was logged in. Switching to an incognito window "fixed"
it.

That said, I too find that people use LinkedIn in different ways, I try to
only link with people whom I know personally, ideally have worked with, and
know something about me. I do occasionally get random invites (which I assume
is someone trying to reach me) which I will accept and add a calendar entry to
remove in 2 weeks. Then if I haven't heard anything from them for 2 weeks I
know it was just random 'contacts' spamming or 'people you might want to link
with' spamming.

------
acd
Its an issue private companies are owning the social networks which are the
real value for most people. Ie you give away private information which are
then sold as targeted ads to you.

For example SMTP is an internet standard yet almost none of the new tech is
standardized chat, social networks.

~~~
pmlnr
> none of the new tech is standardized chat

XMPP?

> social networks

This is on it's way (sort of) in form of ActivityStreams, webmentions +
h-feed, etc. Making something into a standard unfortunately takes a lot of
time but with the GDPR it might even get a push, data portability wise.

------
yeukhon
LinkedIn is a good tool. The recruitment email aspect is definitely quite
annoying, but please consider using an alternative email address so you don't
get spammed, if that's one of the things you find problematic. It's an easy
solution to that (you can also disable notification). I always use separate
email addresses to keep my sanity (one for private, one for bank, one for
useless stuff, one for mailing list, one for tech, one for school, one for
utility bills, and a couple more).

I often use LinkedIn to check out famous people's credentials because I am
generally curious about their backgrounds. From time to time I do get a
"hello" from really big SV companies, otherwise I would have a hard time to
get an initial interview without a LinkedIn profile. I am sure they send like
10,000 requests every month, but it still help speeds the progress with a
recruiter directly reaching out to you.

But there was an embarrassing anecdote, something a lot of users had faced
before. One day I was on LinkedIn and it asked me whether I want to import
contacts, I hit "no thanks", but I think there was another confirmation which
I pressed "next" and LinkedIn sent out an invitation to everyone in my email
contact list, including many mailing lists. Some mailing lists rejected the
email, but some let the email through its filter.

~~~
philipodonnell
I agree. If it was just a resume hosting tool and a graph of who probably
knows who then it would be quite valuable. As long as it is... whatever you
call that kind of thing, its always going to be something people hate.

------
pablostarter
It's tied to an IP address, you have a limited number of visits per day. At
least in my experience has been like that, really annoying...

[https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/106476](https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/106476)
[https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/69654](https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/69654)

~~~
hedora
I think they’ve completely disabled public profiles. I never use LinkedIn, and
my own profile is now locked down (though pieces of it show up in search
engine cache).

------
jamhan
LinkedIn need to be made an example of. They continue to spam with contact
recommendations etc even after I closed my account.

------
sambe
Easily the buggiest, spammiest and most dishonest of the social media sites, I
hardly find it surprising. Never had any reason to go there other than
incessant spam invites, unwanted notifications and the vague promise of
potential future value of contacts.

------
mathattack
LinkedIn seems to be moving heavily towards monetize at all costs. They’ve
always been an Enterprise Company making money off of ads and HR departments.
Now they’re going more extreme with aggressive credit card policies and more
user limits. They risk killing the goose that’s laying their golden eggs.
Facebook is learning it quicker than they are.

------
pasbesoin
Years ago, LinkedIn's early behavior caused me to avoid them. I can't say
anything's changed.

I wonder what I'll do if/when I need to engage in a "traditional" job search.
There's no way I want to let them into my life, professional nor otherwise.

As for the ongoing "networking" aspect: It reminds me all too much of the "can
you do something for me" networking permeating the traditional job search.
I've met a minority of really helpful people and generous spirit, in the past,
in that context. But, it's individuals you get to know, personally; the
proforma data exchanges are mostly just part of the routine and are at best a
pre-cursor to those few real connections.

I can't see LinkedIn or its like ever "algorithmizing" that. Though, like I
said, I don't have experience with it.

TL;DR: If I'm not a networking cynic, I'm a pragmatist. And with the way
LinkedIn has spammed me, because one of my friends once touched their
property, however briefly and/or indirectly, I'm not very optimistic their
model matched my experience of what actually works and is useful.

And, I don't want their cooties.

------
wrs
Aside from the question of whether the request should be denied... The HTTP
status “999 Request Denied” is complete nonsense. What is the point of that?

~~~
metafunk
Am I weird for being more upset about this than the rest of LinkedIn's shady
"public" page treatment?

------
Tepix
Unfortunately, the german LinkedIn competitor (clone?) xing.com is getting
less usable all the time. They try very hard to get you to subscribe and have
crippled most of their functions (search etc) in reckless fashion.

~~~
distances
Xing is almost a scam, demanding asymmetrical methods for signing to a service
(such as their paid membership) and canceling that service. For canceling, you
need all kinds of manually sent, privacy endangering proofs of identity while
subscribing is of course very straightforward.

Furthermore, they are very aggressive at sending any of these fees to
collections if you dispute their shady tactics -- I personally know people
who've been bitten by this.

It has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I always strongly suggest
everyone to abandon them. What they do is technically legal, but definitely
should not be. The company can't die soon enough.

------
bitL
LinkedIn is super buggy lately (6 months+); it might be one of those recent
ones. Maybe they are transferring from their own tech to Azure, causing all
kinds of fun happening?

------
extesy
You might have bought a wrong product then. You should use PPC job posting
that only charges you for clicks and doesn't have any trials or annual
subscriptions: [https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/74054/pay-
per-...](https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/74054/pay-per-click-
pricing-for-posting-a-job-frequently-asked-questions?lang=en)

------
muthusk
LinkedIn wants users to sign in to see anyone's profile. what is seen is
defined by the user. LinkedIn is behind networking data. who sees who, who
connects to who and how are the connections and relations impacting.. etc.. so
they are not for showing anyone profile for the public. that is the new
business model. this news is mistitled, Linkedin is not anonymous anymore.

~~~
0x00000000
I wish Google would obliterate their search engine ranking for redirecting you
to a login screen that does not contain any of the text from the preview

------
hedora
Moving forward, I guess I’ll have to make sure my web server has all the info
my LinkedIn profile contains.

~~~
demarq
most people are likely to know how to get to linked in, but your webserver...
not so much.

~~~
hedora
Point taken, though my GitHub page is right under LinkedIn for the common
spelling of my name on unbubbled google search. Also, you can figure out the
right spelling by skimming the top ten of the other spelling’s results (oddly,
LinkedIn is the top hit for both spellings).

I mostly just crosslink across reputable, indexable domains and make sure the
same keywords show up everywhere that’s possible. :-)

But, yeah, nothing seems to think my web server should be in the top ten of
any keyword search.

~~~
demarq
> common spelling of my name on unbubbled google search

I think there is a misunderstanding here. Things work the other way around.
People do not seek you, linked in takes you to them.

A recruiter more often is looking for people with your skillset, than looking
for you specifically.

In other words they are not typing in your name into a search engine, they are
typing "aws architect python" etc.

If they were seeking you specifically, they probably already know enough about
you and will just get to emailing you directly.

------
Pxtl
That's fair, I'm ignoring LinkedIn. Seriously, I'm ignoring a crapload of
messages from that service.

------
deft
yep I noticed this months ago. Very annoying, I set mine to public for a
reason...

------
pavel_lishin
I just ran into this, and it's weird, because it's not consistent. I tried to
look up someone's profile, and saw the same paywall page - but accessing it
from a different browser profile (or maybe Incognito - I forget) showed the
profile to me.

------
notadoc
Easy solution; don't use LinkedIn.

------
deftturtle
is anyone actually surprised? LinkedIn is even more hostile than Facebook.
scum of the earth.

------
brndnmtthws
LinkedIn is a complete joke, but also somewhat necessary. It's become the new
resume. I personally maintain a parody of myself profile (check it out if you
want:
[https://linkedin.com/in/brndnmtthws](https://linkedin.com/in/brndnmtthws))
but I'm considering deleting my account altogether because LinkedIn seems to
only be used as a spam delivery mechanism these days.

~~~
kerouanton
"LinkedIn seems to only be used as a spam delivery mechanism these days."

I created a dedicated email address for Linkedin. And yes, I do receive a lot
of spam on this unique email address. For testing purposes, I regularly update
this email address to a new one every 6 months, and spam begins to flow a few
days after the address change. So I believe either LinkedIn resells email
addresses, makes users emails public and easy to scrap, or regularly gets
hacked.

------
webmaven
_Public_ not _pubic_. SMH

~~~
sarreph
No need to be condescending about it ("smh") — people make mistakes...

------
sidcool
Honestly, anything you want private should not go to LinkedIn.

~~~
ealexhudson
The article's point is the inverse: you cannot get any info public (without
login) e even if that's explicitly what you ask for..

