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A comment on LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts.

Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by takee on Thursday July 23, 2015 @09:12PM (#9939527)
It's fairly easy to come up with a long list of shady practices that force me to not trust LinkedIn:

1. To start with, they sneaked in the request to access all your email contacts and constantly spam them in your name which can be embarrassing at times to say the least.

2. Their mobile apps do the same with your phone contacts, cleverly hiding the checkmark (in smallest font) to disallow the uploading of contacts. I have unknowingly let them look through my contacts at least two different times prompting me to never install their app again.

3. Letting others know that you viewed their profile. This is fine as long as you know about this feature but I bet that a bunch of us were taken by surprise in the early days to find out that our "online research" on someone was not private unless if you're incognito.

4. Charging you beyond the free trial period without any email or notification about it. I agree that many businesses do this but some of them like Amazon and Netflix are nice enough to allow you to disable the future payments before the trail ends. Also they tend to notify you about the payments.

5. Letting people have access to my email and other contact info even when I haven't accepted their request to connect. This may have been fixed with the recent change but may just have been one of those hidden features that led to their popularity with the recruiter world in the first place.

I am sure I missed out a bunch of other things here but these are the reasons why I can never trust LinkedIn.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by suprgeek on Thursday July 23, 2015 @09:57PM (#9939717)
- LinkedIn has employed "Dark Patterns" for a long time to scarf up your Address Book via your e-mail id. Then unless you are VERY careful you will end up spamming everyone with an invite.

- They also employed a MTM attack on your mobile "Intro App" https://threatpost.com/linkedin-intro-app-equivalent-to-man-...

- Have you noticed that the LI News feed is a high-noise collection of crap?

- and on and on

"Monetizing your users" is rapidly making that site useless for almost everyone.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by colinbartlett on Thursday July 23, 2015 @11:08PM (#9939928)
LinkedIn was the first in a long line of social networks I deleted starting 4 years ago. Not sure how anyone gets value out of enough to justify.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by Ntrails on Friday July 24, 2015 @05:13AM (#9940847)
LinkedIn is not a social network. It's a site which holds my CV and then recruiters message me with Job Specs. I either like the spec or don't, and sometimes I get interviews from it.

I accept any friend request from recruiters/colleagues and beyond that never ever use the site.

My justification is I like getting job specs, and the cost is essentially nothing. Sure I hate that it's got a side panel asking me to connect with an old Wheel of Time fansite e-friend from Norway who was in my email contacts and I've not spoken to in some 15 years but it's hardly the end of the world.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by dredmorbius on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:05PM (#9946158)
"Social" in the sense of leveraging (exceptionally aggressively) the social graph and personal connections.

Less so in terms of content / context.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by JimmaDaRustla on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:31AM (#9941821)
It's funny you say "monetizing users". Immediately after reading that, I opened up linked in and I had a message in my inbox from IBM providing me a free trial to some software and it had a little "sponsored" tag on the inbox item.

Dear god this site is wretched.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by machz on Friday July 24, 2015 @03:05AM (#9940479)
It's so unfortunate that LinkedIn is successful in its domain despite its passively unethical ways. This company never gave me any positive vibes. It's always been recommendations that people begged from their co-workers and fluff talk about own profile. They are like the Ryanair of software industry. Least concern for the users. It's on my todo list to get rid of my minimal account info on LinkedIn as soon as possible.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts by secfirstmd on Friday July 24, 2015 @07:16AM (#9941168)
Except Ryanair are actually getting much better at customer service these days, while still nearly always being the cheapest.
[ Parent | on HN ]