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[firecat]

LinkedIn has apparently created an ithing app that fiddles with your email. If you connect it to your email, it will add a signature to whatever you send out. The signature will include stuff about your LinkedIn profile.

If someone sends you an email that uses the same email address they use for LinkedIn, the app will add their job title, photo, and all your shared contacts to their email.

For this to happen, you need to give LinkedIn your email password and all your outgoing and incoming email will be routed through their servers.

I know that the NSA reads everybody's messages and Google stores almost everybody's messages so I suppose it hardly matters. But...ew.

I deleted my account there. I suppose that means I'll never get a job again.

http://www.bishopfox.com/blog/2013/10/linkedin-intro/

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/gigaom/articles/2013_10_24_good_news_bad_news_linkedin_data_in_ios_mail_arrives_but_it_can_read_your_mail.html

Comments

[zeborah]

...O. M. G.

[lexicalcrow]

...I mean, I wasn't looking for a reason to delete my rarely used LinkedIn account, but man, that's not a bad reason at all. D:

[ironed_orchid]

I have never given LInkedIn or any site access to my email address book/contacts list, or downloaded any of their apps. I hope that means my email is okay.

I had a stupid thing earlier this year where Avast was appending a sig about web safety to the end of my emails, and I have not renewed my account with them as a result.

[firecat]

Avast was appending a sig about web safety to the end of my emails

*headdesk*

[megpie71]

Sometimes, I regret not being more connected to the Web 2.0 world. This is not one of those times.

I'm reasonably safe from this, since I don't have a LinkedIn account (or if I *do*, I'm not aware of it and I never started it, so don't believe anything you hear about me from that source) for much the same reason that I don't have a Facebook account. Namely, privacy, and being unreasonable enough to believe if my metadata and marketing information is so damn important to these companies, they'll be willing to pay me for it. Or at least offer me something other than just another "see how popular you aren't" app (I have tumblr and twitter for that). I stopped being worried about how many friends I did and didn't have shortly after finishing high school, and haven't really bothered about it since.

[silveradept]

...That's horrible. I would think there should be an issue of integrity involved here that would make people stop, but I guess people don't know enough of the workings of servers to be outraged?

[selki]

I've seen some rage about it over on Twitter.

[evilawyer]

A heartfelt thanks for this information. Everything everywhere is creepy.

[firecat]

Too true.

[notyourwendy]

Weelll, I'm off to go delete my rarely used LinkedIn account now. That was the prompt I needed to get over my laziness and just go get rid of it.

[stardreamer]

They let you delete it? I've heard they're as bad as AOL about that. You may want to ask a few friends to check for you and see if it's actually gone.

LinkedIn spammed me relentlessly for a couple of years because I had a few friends who were on it; apparently it scrapes any e-mail address it can find on your computer, with or without your permission. It took threats of a CAN-SPAM complaint to get them to stop, and then they got all bratty about it and said I would have to BEG if I ever wanted them to let me on again. As if I'd been on in the first place. Win-win, said I, and that was that.

[firecat]

My name isn't showing up in a search there. I guess we'll see if they've reformed after what they did to you...

[jesse_the_k]

Just deleted mine today (thanks firecat!) and after warning me six times that it was permanent, they also said "will take time for new reality to propagate through search engines."

[firecat]

I kept getting invitations after deleting mine. But none since I unsubscribed from the invitations. We'll see, I guess.