Linked In... too linked in?

[wraith808]

I keep my personal and professional profiles/lives separate.  It's a pretty artificial demarcation, and I know that with effort someone can cross the streams.  But that effort is the point.

On linked in, I have a profile.  I've never linked it with one of my personal profiles, I've never availed myself of the search your contact list (which I think is a bad way to get a list of contacts for a professional profile in any case, but oh well), and use my professional e-mail.  Up until recently, its been fine.

But over the last few days/weeks, I've noticed contacts from my personal life coming up on the you may know this person.  The creepier thing about it is that some of them I haven't corresponded with in literally years.  So the only place that this could have come from is my e-mail.  That I've never given them the password to.

Something is rotten.  Very rotten.  And I'd drop linked in- other than the fact that I do legitimately use it for business contacts.

Why can't companies just stick to doing things well rather than trying to play underhanded tactics?

[cyberdiva]

Though I would NEVER let LinkedIn, Facebook, or any other social network have access to my email addressbook, some people I know apparently do give access to these organizations.  If your email address is in their email addressbook, especially if it's the same or very similar to the one you've used for your account in that organization, that fact may generate a "do you know this person" message to you from, say, LinkedIn.  It has certainly happened to me. 

[app103]

There are a few ways that people get recommended on social networks.

One, as you guessed, is that you allow access to your contact list, through your email account.

Another, is that someone else may have given them access to their contact list, and you may be on it.

Initially, that person would be given the opportunity to add or invite you, first, but if they don't, you might be offered the opportunity, later on, to add them. The fact that there is a relationship between the 2 of you, has already been established through their email contact list, and the site now knows this.

This is a rather nasty underhanded thing for social networks to do, but any social network that encourages you to share your contact list with them, must be assumed to be doing this, since most do.

People really need to stop sharing their data with sites in this way, because the privacy implications affect other people as you have been a witness to.

About the only way you can control things and prevent other people from sharing your data in a way that connects the 2 of you on their site is to sign up for each social network with a brand new email address that is used only for signing up for social networks. It won't be in anybody else's contact list.

[TaoPhoenix]

About the only way you can control things and prevent other people from sharing your data in a way that connects the 2 of you on their site is to sign up for each social network with a brand new email address that is used only for signing up for social networks. It won't be in anybody else's contact list.

I basically did that, creating a brand new email account for my job search activities, so wherever that floats around is generally "networking", though it does end up in a few amusing places. One wrinkle y'all might watch out for is that sometimes if you add someone with your new work search email they'll add you back wit *your other email* and then the tendrils of social networking begin to burrow in like some alien monster.

[40hz]

I keep my personal and professional profiles/lives separate.  It's a pretty artificial demarcation, and I know that with effort someone can cross the streams.  But that effort is the point.

And that's about as good as it gets if you're going to participate at all. I have the smallest web profile and presence (by design) of anybody I know. And even then, I wind up in things without my knowledge or consent.

Best to just do what you can and not worry about it too much. Because short of setting up an alternate identity - and using it exclusively from day one - there's no longer much hope of being completely invisible online any more. And that's not something that's ever going to change short of an infocalypse. And I don't think many of us would welcome the chance to experience something like that.

[wraith808]

Another, is that someone else may have given them access to their contact list, and you may be on it.

Initially, that person would be given the opportunity to add or invite you, first, but if they don't, you might be offered the opportunity, later on, to add them. The fact that there is a relationship between the 2 of you, has already been established through their email contact list, and the site now knows this.

Thanks!  I never thought of it that way... and yes, it's pretty underhanded.

And that's about as good as it gets if you're going to participate at all. I have the smallest web profile and presence (by design) of anybody I know. And even then, I wind up in things without my knowledge or consent.

Yeah, I know you're right.  But it's still pretty jarring.  Unfortunately, there are legitimate things that I want to do in my private life that require my real name, and that's where the cracks start to show.

*sigh*

[40hz]

Yeah, I know you're right.  But it's still pretty jarring.  Unfortunately, there are legitimate things that I want to do in my private life that require my real name, and that's where the cracks start to show.

*sigh*

I hear and am sighing right along with you, Bro. Truly I am....

[TaoPhoenix]

Best to just do what you can and not worry about it too much. Because short of setting up an alternate identity - and using it exclusively from day one - there's no longer much hope of being completely invisible online any more. And that's not something that's ever going to change short of an infocalypse. And I don't think many of us would welcome the chance to experience something like that.

And even that alternate identity isn't good enough, because on places like Facebook other people will tag you anyway under your old name, as well as posting resumes looking for jobs. (Going a little tinfoil hat, I still think Apple sold my info to Facebook, and I hate both companies enough to believe it, until ironclad proof emerges otherwise.)

In some ways I welcome the *after effects* (after the nuclear grade pain!!      ) because that might finally cause a public uprising to put severe privacy protections in place. (Fun Case Scenario: we all get to wear designer hoodies or something to protect our faces, and ID ourselves by number or something.)

An Info Apocalypse would be something like a Nuclear Bradley Manning - suppose *every web visit by anyone, ever, showed up all at once. We're only playing games because "this guy posted a drunk pic on Facebook, that guy said something on twitter." Wait until the head of the family values org is found to be a porn addict or something. Maybe HR somewhere faked their own resume back in the day. A cop might be an ex felon. Everything. By everyone. Ever. Smashed so far into the net it will never be erased.

THEN we might take privacy seriously. But not before.

[40hz]

THEN we might take privacy seriously. But not before.

Or maybe even not at all seriously any more - we'll just start believing whatever we want to believe about anything.

Oh...wait...we do that already, don't we?

----

p.s. regarding tinfoil hats:

Don't be too hard on yourself. There was a time up until a single incident a couple of years ago where you'd find less than a dozen hits on me. And of that number, maybe six or seven actually were me.

Then my lovely alma mater put my name and old home address in their online alumni directory without my permission. I had even sent them an e-mail specifically saying they did not have my permission to do so. Ever since then I'm considerably less hard to Google. You'll now get 240 or so hits, of which about 80% are about me. And the only thing that changed in anything I had been doing up until that point was my alumini listing.

So it's not as crazy as you may think. It only takes one. Especially when the information gets shared or is readily accessible to somebody who uses it for some "business" purpose. (If I get one more 'affinity group' offer for investment advice or insurance I'm gonna scream!   )

[Tinman57]

  I was installing commercial software several years back.  The first window to pop up was the EULA.  Unlike most people, I read these things for good reason.  I found buried in the EULA a blurb that stated you give them the right to copy your address book, then went on to say what they would use it for; To sync with your online address book AND to send information (spam) to your contacts.  I had to do some fancy hacking to keep that from happening, which by law would have been illegal.  Yeah, illegal for me to stop them from spamming my friends, but not for them to snatch my address book. 

[TaoPhoenix]

Yeah, illegal for me to stop them from spamming my friends, but not for them to snatch my address book.  

Except it just might be, in a far-reach case we probably won't see until the InfoApocalypse mentioned elsewhere. I saw some rumblings that "specific organizations of data can (Sometimes) be copyrighted." So yes while everything goes away if you sign a EULA, those copyright penalties could be tasty! "My address book, that will be $175,000 please."  

[Carol Haynes]

There is a simple way round the address book problem - always sign up to websites with email addresses that are unique to that website. If you host your own email it is dead easy to set up an infinite number of unique addresses that all forward to your main address. That way if you are in someone's address book it won't match the address registered on the social site.

[Edvard]

I always figured it was a case of "six degrees of separation".  I get "you may know X" emails all the time and it's somebody I vaguely remember from a place I worked at 15 years ago, but since I've been in and out of the same industry for ~20 years, it's somehow not surprising. 
I used LinkedIn strictly for job networking, and so they have my work history, but not much else, to go on, which prolly explains a lot.  I NEVER gave them my address book nor my Facebook friends list or any of that jive, so my 'real life' friends don't show up, and they don't have my personal email either; I made a new one strictly for business and job hunting.

[Renegade]

Why can't companies just stick to doing things well rather than trying to play underhanded tactics?

Because there are NO consequences for their actions, except positive ones. It doesn't matter how unethical or illegal something is -- there's always an upside. The only decision to be made is weighing the risk of getting caught, and weighing the cost of potential fines against profit. e.g. A pharmaceutical company profits to the tune of $12 billion when it knows its drug is killing people. When they are caught, they pay just under $1 billion in fines for a tidy profit of $11 billion. Nobody ever goes to jail. There are numerous examples of outright illegal/immoral actions by companies and in pretty much every case it's better for them to be criminals as it's always profitable and there are no personal consequences. HSBC laundering drug money anyone? The examples go on forever.

There's a special term... "too big to jail."

Why should companies be ethical when it's profitable to be criminal with no negative consequences?