LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

There's a more benign answer to the creepy connection suggestions. LOTS of people import their email address books into linkedin. It's not a stretch to think that his girlfriend's mother (or some other relative) imported her address book that contained the names of both the OP and the girlfriend's stepfather.<p>As far as the creepier name mismatches go, my oldest email address list has tons of maiden names and unused/defunct email addresses. It's likely that some high school friend of the OP uploaded an old address book and LinkedIn's algorithm made a best effort match on some of the rarer names even if the email addresses don't match. I mean, how many Lucy Hatsbaughs do you think there are on linked in? Two? LinkedIn may as well gamble on odds like that.

I finally joined linkedin about a week ago, and it just feels...scammy.<p>It's interesting to me (or frightening) that some of the smartest people I know have the fewest endorsements. People I know doing [1]<i>actual real work</i> on things like "microcontrollers" have...3-4 endorsements with them, but people who I <i>know</i> have only maybe <i>installed</i> Linux, have 20 or so endorsements for "linux".<p>There are people I know who are post-graduate level experts on certain fields, and those fields are either not listed at all, or they have maybe 1 or 2 endorsements for it.<p>Stupid.<p>I'll keep just linking people to my github, and showing them projects I've built.<p>[1]: Actual real work as in: writing libraries that other people use. Contributing to the community in ways that effect <i>the entire</i> community.

Facebook does the same thing and it's just as creepy.<p>I closed my "real" account around 2011. A few months back I created a new blank account because I needed access to a couple organization's pages. The only information on that account is my name (a fairly common one) and an email address which is different from the one on my original account. It's possible they have some geographic info linking the two accounts as I closed and opened them from the same city.<p>90% of the "people you may know" are correct and from dramatically different social groups. Some how it's picked out a girl I did a family stay with in Germany in '04, a fourth cousin I'm only vaguely aware of, current friends from several groups, and high school friends I haven't talked to in 10 years.

Here are some things I find more creepy about LinkedIn:<p>-It tells people when I view their profile. So now I <i>never</i> view people's profiles because I don't want to look like a stalker. Imagine if Facebook worked this way.<p>-An andecdote, but maybe you've experienced it: a guy I worked with about 3 years ago (and only for 2 weeks) has "endorsed" me several times recently. I don't know if this is some kind of quid pro quo, but it makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

It's not the creepiness that's relevant here. That's rather subjective, and as others have pointed out, all social networks do the same.<p>What's most relevant here is that it's downright illegal in most Western countries LinkedIn e.a. operate in. Both collecting this information and sharing it without explicit (as in: not just default checked boxes) informed (as in: information about why, what and shared with whom) consent is not just unethical, it's a violation of most known privacy laws.<p>The widespread practice of blatantly unethical business practices in our industry by both high profile companies and small start-ups alike is something we as professionals should take more seriously.<p>If we don't, it doesn't only harm the image of our industry, but we'll be faced with ever more regulatory hurdles. The infamous EU cookie law is just the beginning if we don't act to clean up our own industry.<p>Every second web company seems to have a business model that directly or indirectly generates revenue through stalking people on a massive scale. This cannot possible be sustainable without a huge backlash.

I just did a test and opened LinkedIn and took a look at the suggested people.<p>They included: Several people with the same name as I (expected, not really creepy). But also: People that I trained martial arts with, and I NEVER exchanged electronic messages with them, and I do not talk with them for 4 years now. Also I doubt they remember me to search me, I am not much remarkable. People that I met at school and church 6, 7 years ago, and that again, I never exchanged electronic messages with them.<p>Yes, LinkedIn is very, very, very creepy.

I always assumed the suggestions were from other people importing their Twitters and email contacts. So if person A emails me and then imports their emails, Linkedin can suggest to both of us that we might know each other, increasing the chance of creating a connection (and creepy-ness factor for me).

No creepier than other social networking sites.<p>I find it interesting that it has automated what some folks have done on their own for years. There was a woman at Netapp who managed these sorts of potential and known relationships in her head about the folks working at a couple of big Netapp customers.<p>I guess what I find amusing is that it is was my experience when introducing myself to someone new at a social event and saying "I work at &#60;company&#62;" or "Yeah, I grew up in Las Vegas" or something along those lines I would often get "Really, I knew this person &#60;name&#62; who worked/lived there, did you know them?" as social banter. It didn't creep me out then either, but I'm sure that for some folks it does.

Yes, I also noted the creepiness of "viewers of the profile also viewed."<p><a href="https://twitter.com/joelandren/status/251417778643406848" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/joelandren/status/251417778643406848</a><p>If I were a woman, I would be turned off to see something like this.

I've had the same experience. Register on LinkedIn, log in, "Would you like to connect with &#60;screwed up relationship from years ago&#62;?" We hadn't spoken in years or connected on any other site, I could only come up with one thing: she emailed me once. I bet she gave LinkedIn her email credentials to find connections. I hate that feature.

For a while, Linked in was present a password input box that looked like "You failed to login, try again" at a glance, but in reality it was asking for your email address and password. From that point, they could read your email and extract all your contacts.

The site is down for me. Here is the cached version: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1436&#38;bih=806&#38;sclient=psy-ab&#38;q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-creepiest-social-network%2F&#38;oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-creepiest-social-network%2F&#38;gs_l=serp.3...12288.12981.1.13574.6.6.0.0.0.0.101.436.4j1.5.0...0.1...1c.1.12.psy-ab.bV51ytimoPc&#38;pbx=1" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1436&#38;bi...</a><p>Update: Creepy. But I think most of this data can be lifted from other users who imported contacts from GMail. I think they must be matching only by name, because people could have been in touch with different mail addresses (at a previous employer, for instance).

On a throw away account.<p>Several people have hit upon the major method LinkedIn uses which is that someone you know who has your name/email/... (or likely many someones) uploaded an address book to LinkedIn. LinkedIn then infers that because that person knows you, that you may know the other people they know (which is often true). They then combine that when a bunch of far more complicated inferences to generate the list.<p>The goal of course is to provide suggestions to someone who just signed up. Sadly, the reason it feels creepy is because it seems like voodoo. They could do a better job explaining how it worked, but a lot of the bigger inferences are secret sauce.

To me LinkedIn is basically a bunch of people circle jerking each other. Professionally.

I think we all don't want to admit that we look up ex-girlfriends, neighbors, college roommates, etc. when we're on these social networks and we're bored (or lonely).<p>I searched for an ex once on LinkedIn and found nothing...until a year later when she finally signed on and there she was in my "you might know" suggestion list.

LinkedIn recently suggested my neighbor from 1995. I didn't even have Internet access, let alone an email address back then. I haven't had any contact with this person since.

I did the "attractive women" thing (took a hit for the team, for science) and that was absolutely true. The odd thing was, the first random girl I clicked on was this girl I kinda had a crush on in college (all my "People you may know" recommendations were from college, even as I'm three years out) who happened to be Asian. Then...all of the "Also Viewed" were fairly attractive, well-groomed Asian women. Isn't that interesting? I thought at the very least it would break me out of race, but apparently they're their own class.<p>The other thing I'll say is perhaps this author is tapped out of "People you may know" and LinkedIn is simply guessing . Mine looks fairly reasonable, random, and not like they were digging particularly deep.

Google cache: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-creepiest-social-network%2F&#38;aq=f&#38;oq=cache%3Awww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-creepiest-social-network%2F&#38;aqs=chrome.0.57j58j60.2709j0&#38;sourceid=chrome&#38;ie=UTF-8" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.i...</a>

I routinely get suggested to connect with people I've never even emailed or who used email account I closed a decade ago.<p>It's reasons like this I wish someone would do a Public/Private key based p2p social network. Essentially you digitally sign a key that you know someone and that's how you derive connections. Seems like you could implement browsable profiles as well.

The OP site is down so I don't know what they are citing as "creepy"... but I never considered LinkedIn to be a <i>social</i> network. It has always just been a <i>professional</i> network. It is my always on, mostly up to date resume. It has the who/what/where/when of my employment history. I have only accepted connections from people that I have worked with (and even then only those I actually worked with... not just anyone that worked at the same company but does not actually know me in some way) or friends that are in similar fields (and the rare cases of recruiters I've dealt with regarding employment). It actually bothers me that people use it to post twitter/facebook style status updates. LinkedIn is the last place I would think to read about someone's breakfast choice... but I've seen those updates before.

I'm usually pretty careful about picking technologies and websites to use. I've steered clear of linkedin and as time goes on, I'm pretty happy with that decision.

LinkedIn leaks privacy information through their "also viewed" section.<p>Applied to a new job and started working there, after a few months I decided to look up my managers LinkedIn profile, only to notice that on his page the "also viewed" section showed employees from my older company and family. So yeah, so now I know he was trying to figure out more about me through LinkedIn.

Eh, LinkedIn says that there are other people that work for my company that I might know. The only problem is, I'm an officer of my company, I know everyone who works there and they're all on my Linkedin. The people its suggesting, work for a similarly named company, about 1000 miles away... Score 1 for accuracy...

I don't like LinkedIn for similar reasons but I somehow feel I will offend people if I drop out, and I have had some decent leads from it over the years.<p>The import contacts feature is particularly nefarious, it says "import" but it actually keeps checking down the track (or at least it used to work like that).

How was Doug connected ? Doug while only communicating with you via email imported his contacts. His contacts include you. There's the connection. Works similarly on FB. When that business associate imports contacts aka connections, they find you on the other side :) It's really that simple

funny this should come up today. the girl i am currently dating happens to be both attractive and asian. i was on her linkedin yesterday and noticed that the "people also viewed" widget was 100% other young, good-looking asian women. so, add race as a vector to the linkedin creep graph...

Looks like his site was taken down or something. Its redirecting to the wordpress setup page.

I see LinkedIn as something akin to going to networking events. They really really want you to network, and they make some reasonable assumptions about your inhibitions. That's what their paying customers are there for.

Redirected to your install.php file at this URL:<p><a href="http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-network/wp-admin/install.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo...</a>

probably worth pointing out that LI doesn't have ads and makes its money from subscribers, most of whom i'm guessing are sales/recruiting.<p>from a pure-business-no-ethics perspective, why would you care what anyone else thought? w/ that point of view: every connection or link, however creepy, makes the system as whole more valuable to subscribers.<p>personally, the feature doesn't have enough churn, so i always see the same 5 faces, 99% of the time it's background...otherwise it would probably creep me out slash annoy more.

I also don't like how they recently changed the invitation email titles to "XXX, good to see you on LinkedIn", as it makes it look like it's a personal message, when it's not.

As a hacker, I consider seeing<p><i>Error establishing a database connection</i><p>as more creepy :)

I don't know, LinkedIn seems a lot less creepy than Facebook. I mean some of the ads I get hit with would make many folks blush.

If you're a programmer I see no reason to have a LinkedIn profile. GitHub is better for résumé and networking.

I don't have a linkedin account. Should I? Does it provide value I can't find elsewhere?

Wow, it looks like interactually's site has been hacked

Just deleted my account today.

Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually respects them.<p>I was shocked, for example, when I learned that a certain social network gives universal profile access to employees as a perk. That would not happen at Google. If you looked at your high-school ex-girlfriend's email, you'd be fired immediately (and deserve it).<p>Social <i>is</i> creepy, because it's all about being defined by other people, which is ridiculous and horrible. What, so do I suck at Programming Languages because I haven't trolled my 25 closest acquaintances for endorsements? Am I really going to become more credible in Machine Learning if I get 15 strangers to "endorse" me?<p>The major conflict in "Social" is what I call "Document vs. Improve" (or: Exploit vs. Explore). A social app can expand the web of social connections and make it more efficient, but (a) that's really hard, and (b) there isn't a lot of short-term money in it. Or it can document social relationships that already exist, and make a shit-ton of money off the data. That's easy, but it doesn't actually make anyone's life better. Guess which one the mainstream social players favor?<p>What I find depressing about LinkedIn is how much it has play-by-play replicated the old, broken way of doing things. Resumes. Titles and dates of employment. Recommendations. Recruiter spam. It feels like the Wayback Machine took us to 1995.

As long as LinkedIn continues to get me high paying jobs, it is all good.

Site's down.