Linked-in is violating your privacy

Linked-in, the 2nd most popular social network has instituted a policy where they will share your information, photo, contacts, etc with third parties. You must opt out. Linked-in never notified users of this change in policy, at least I never received one and I'm on it all the time.

"LinkedIn Corp. backed away from an advertising product that used members' photos and recommendations, marking a rare privacy gaffe for the social network.

The professional networking site, which has 120 million profiles, has largely been able to stay out of the spotlight over privacy issues that affected social media sites such as Facebook Inc.

In late June, LinkedIn began testing a new form of advertising it called "social ads" that shared users' public actions, like recommendations or following companies, in a commercial format"

online.wsj.com...

In order to opt out of social advertising, the LinkedIn user has to take four steps to escape third-party advertisements:

Hover over the user name in the top right hand corner of any LinkedIn page and click ‘Settings’. On the Settings page, click ‘Account’. On the Account tab, click ‘Manage Social Advertising’. Uncheck the box next to “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.” and click the save button.

Users also may want to opt out of receiving email from LinkedIn advertisers. This setting also allows LinkedIn advertising partners to spam users with promotions during email marketing campaigns if the user follows the brand. To opt out of this setting, click the Email Preferences tab and click on the ‘Turn on/off partner InMail’ link to locate the check box."

Once again a social media site attracts millions of clients with a no advertising, solid privacy policy and once critical mass of users has been reached, they change the policy absent what would be reasonable notification.

Those who use these networks need to on a regular basis check the privacy settings since they are being changed with new "opt out" settings being added all the time.

Its time for a law that forces opt-in policy for all of these sites. To display people's photos without their explicit consent is outrageous.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Thanks. I zapped that lot.

I was not aware of this.

Thank goodness you spotted this...

It appears that in America, where information is property, some people are allowed to claim yours simply by saying so.

Where/when I grew up we were taught that was 'stealing.'

Thanks for the heads up. Sneaky buggers.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Thanks for the heads-up dolphinfan! I hate it when these flippin "social media" sites sell you off like that.

S&F, well spotted, and thanks for the heads-up.

Actually there is a law, or whether it's a guideline or not, I am not sure, anyway it's called Confirmed Double Opt-In.

A website on asking you to sign up to their offers, newsletters, invitations, and other mailings must first ask you to choose to receive such items, and then send you an email in which you confirm that you wish to receive such information.

I used to work for an Internet Security company and had to rewrite a lot of code to enforce this confirmed opt-in business in order to avoid being fined.

Another group that have the power to pull the plug on people who abuse email and the like are called Spamhaus, they can and do pull the plug on companies for sending out junk emails or pursuing other options like trawling from email addresses to spam. The website is worth a read if you're feeling all technical one day Spamhaus Project