Here’s a really awkward moment. Say you’re a guy who broke up with a woman ages ago. All of a sudden, your LinkedIn contact info is added to her profile via a invite that you didn’t send. Creepy isn’t it? Good thing that it can never happen right? Wrong. It has happened:
An aggressive expansion strategy by LinkedIn has backfired spectacularly amid accusations of identity fraud. Users complained the social network sent unrequested invites from their accounts to contacts and complete strangers, often with embarrassing results.
One man claimed LinkedIn sent an invite from his account to an ex-girlfriend he broke up with 12 years ago who had moved state, changed her surname and her email address.
“My wife would like to know why I am suddenly linked to a girlfriend I broke up with 4 years before we met,” wrote Michael Caputo, a literary agent from Massachussetts, US, on LinkedIn’s support forum.
“This ex-girlfriend’s Linked in profile has exactly ONE contact, ME. My wife keeps getting messages asking ‘would you like to link to (her)? You have 1 contact in common!’”
LinkedIn did not respond to several requests for comment before publication.
How could this happen? Here’s how:
Speculation on support forums suggested a bug in LinkedIn’s algorithm was responsible for sending unrequested invites without users’ knowledge. Two threads about unrequested invites ran to more than four pages in LinkedIn’s support forums.
This could explain why I get unsolicited invites on my LinkedIn profile. And I have to admit, it’s annoying and is likely an invasion of the privacy of LinkedIn users. Now not only is LinkedIn not responding to the author of this story, but they also did this:
LinkedIn had closed one of the earliest threads to comments on its forum. Angry users in that thread, started in February, were already threatening to leave the network.
This is not how you deal with an issue like this. You need to come out and explain the issue as well as how you’re going to fix it. You also have to say you’re sorry. LinkedIn should really keep that in mind and rethink how they address this.
Meanwhile, I’ll rethink having a LinkedIn account.
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This entry was posted on April 19, 2013 at 9:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags LinkedIn, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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LinkedIn Accused Of Sending Unrequested Invite To Man’s Ex-Girlfriend…. Awkward!
Here’s a really awkward moment. Say you’re a guy who broke up with a woman ages ago. All of a sudden, your LinkedIn contact info is added to her profile via a invite that you didn’t send. Creepy isn’t it? Good thing that it can never happen right? Wrong. It has happened:
An aggressive expansion strategy by LinkedIn has backfired spectacularly amid accusations of identity fraud. Users complained the social network sent unrequested invites from their accounts to contacts and complete strangers, often with embarrassing results.
One man claimed LinkedIn sent an invite from his account to an ex-girlfriend he broke up with 12 years ago who had moved state, changed her surname and her email address.
“My wife would like to know why I am suddenly linked to a girlfriend I broke up with 4 years before we met,” wrote Michael Caputo, a literary agent from Massachussetts, US, on LinkedIn’s support forum.
“This ex-girlfriend’s Linked in profile has exactly ONE contact, ME. My wife keeps getting messages asking ‘would you like to link to (her)? You have 1 contact in common!’”
LinkedIn did not respond to several requests for comment before publication.
How could this happen? Here’s how:
Speculation on support forums suggested a bug in LinkedIn’s algorithm was responsible for sending unrequested invites without users’ knowledge. Two threads about unrequested invites ran to more than four pages in LinkedIn’s support forums.
This could explain why I get unsolicited invites on my LinkedIn profile. And I have to admit, it’s annoying and is likely an invasion of the privacy of LinkedIn users. Now not only is LinkedIn not responding to the author of this story, but they also did this:
LinkedIn had closed one of the earliest threads to comments on its forum. Angry users in that thread, started in February, were already threatening to leave the network.
This is not how you deal with an issue like this. You need to come out and explain the issue as well as how you’re going to fix it. You also have to say you’re sorry. LinkedIn should really keep that in mind and rethink how they address this.
Meanwhile, I’ll rethink having a LinkedIn account.
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This entry was posted on April 19, 2013 at 9:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags LinkedIn, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.