LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft

llbpdev about 2 hours ago 7 comments

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And Microsoft doesn't care.

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Discussion (7 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

pugio•26 minutes ago

LinkedIn is one of the most annoying sites on the internet. Every time I mistakenly click a link, it automatically grabs my Google account and creates a new account and profile for me, which I then have to go in and delete. Yes, I finally figured out which arcane preferences settings across both LinkedIn and Google I had to tweak to stop this from happening, but I think it was only after ChatGPT was around to help me wade through the mess.

dlcarrier•3 minutes ago

If you use Chrome, or many of its derivatives, you can log into the web browser itself, and many people don't even know they are doing so. It can leak a lot of data, more so if you use the 'sign in with…' feature on many web pages. On a phone, if you're logged into the phone OS you're logged into the included web browser, and an aftermarket web browser may still leak information from your phone login.

I don't log my phone OS or web browser into any accounts, so I don't have to worry about LinkedIn making fake profile pages, but Cloudflare pretty much always assumes I'm a bot, so there's a bit of a downside. Honestly, I'm probably better off not visiting most of the web pages it blocks me from.

mgartin•21 minutes ago

I recently started to receive emails with:

"New skill available: Puzzle solving"

Begging me to compete with colleagues. Oh, what they have become...

I have unsubscribed from their emails now.

spenvo•12 minutes ago

Good luck actually unsubscribing from LinkedIn emails. The dark pattern they employ is to just periodically add new "categories" of email to send you, that you haven't yet unsubscribed from. Back in ~2015, out of frustration I changed my LinkedIn email to a throwaway, as that was the only way around the issue I could find.

Zenul_Abidin•7 minutes ago

I unsubscribed from LinkedIn emails but they still send me emails of people I should connect with.

Now debating whether I should delete it altogether.

nickdothutton•about 1 hour ago

I really wish LinkedIn would collapse and close so that something useful could take its place. At the moment I feel like it's squatting the "business networking" square on the board, but I don't know what it would take to dislodge it. I wrote a little about this on my blog about a decade ago and I don't feel we are any closer to it being dislodged.

d3Xt3r•about 2 hours ago

I mean, LinkedIn themselves were pretty shady before the Microsoft acquisition - multiple privacy violations, email spam, even had a class action lawsuit against them. Microsoft never cared.

And anyone who set up a LinkedIn account knowing all this don't care either. I look at people who're still on LinkedIn the same way as people who're still on Facebook. They don't have my sympathies.

smackeyacky•about 1 hour ago

My account is only there so nobody is tempted to squat there on my behalf. Perhaps a minor issue overall but worth considering

lbpdev•about 1 hour ago

Fair, I guess. So what's a safe site for candidates to find jobs? Indeed isn't much better.

orionblastar•about 2 hours ago

There is also a Minecraft scam where the scammer takes over the Microsoft account. https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/1puiae0/scammers...