I actually removed LinkedIn app from my Android phone. I don't understand why a glorified web page viewer needs to be able to manage accounts on my phone?

In light of this, sharing my calendar details (and probably more) does not surprise me. Now it's gone from my iPhone as well.

Click on Permissions tab here to see a full list of permissions this app asks for on Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkedin.a...

Last paragraph:

As for what the app will do moving forward: "We will no longer send data from the meeting notes section of your calendar event. There will be a new 'learn more' link to provide more information about how your calendar data is being used." LinkedIn says these updates are already live on the Android app and will be coming to the iOS app shortly.

Well that's a step in the right direction I guess... But still...

I've already removed the LinkedIn app from my phone after this morning's revelations and frankly should've done it a while ago due to the constant notifications count distraction.

As a tech professional there is no shortage of headhunter communique - and a particularly low quality/quantity ratio from LinkedIn - that simply doesn't need to take focus from anything else at my phone's reach.

The Evernote iPhone app also accesses the calendar - if you create a note from the app it puts the current active calendar event title in the note automatically although you as users can delete it again. In fact it's a cool feature

Looks like they've just pushed an update with "calendar improvements"...

Just to be clear, this only applies to an opt-in feature of the app.

I need a bot to post this.

   If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer;
   you're the product being sold. -- blue_beetle

I find this meme a little tiresome. Even if you are paying, it doesn't mean your info will not be used to make money some other way. I'm sure paid users of LinkedIn were also having their data sent back to the servers.

It lessens the chance of your data being used to make money, don't you think?

No, I don't think. If they're data-mining against, say, what conferences you attend to see what adverts to show you, I seriously doubt that they're differentiating paid and unpaid users.

I disagree. If someone is providing a free app, it's essentially a honeypot. For what? Who knows.

Contrast with paid apps such as instagram or evernote or 37 signals: their business is to charge money. They have no interest in selling data because their customers won't like it, and you get probably an order of magnitude less money for data than by just charging for a product.

Instagram is not a paid app.

:%s/instagram/instapaper/

thanks

From my understanding, this feature wasn't tied in to any sort of advertising or nefarious information gathering, it was just a poor/insecure implementation of a vaguely convenient idea.

Oh, shit, I don't want to be a product, so I'm going to stop using open source software pronto.