I’m equally relieved and unnerved to have potentially figured out the answer to a question that has been bothering me for years.
Why do I keep getting personalized LinkedIn requests despite the fact that I do not currently have a LinkedIn account, and I never created one in the first place? How did LinkedIn get the email I use for my blog despite the fact that I have never publicly published this email address anywhere?
For answers to these troubling questions, I turn to a post at Quora that recently came to my attention:
Does LinkedIn access your email or contact list?
YES. Straight from the horse’s mouth: “the people you may know could have been uploaded to LinkedIn through auto authorization if you had at any time your LinkedIn account open and accessed any of your emails through the same browser.” Also “there is not a setting to specifically turn this feature off.”
Here’s the full text of my correspondence with them, through the linkedin help center interface:
Member (05/18/2016 14:39 CST)
Subject: How can I prevent Linkedin from accessing my gmail contacts?
Your Question: I’ve never knowingly given linkedin permission to access my gmail contacts, but it keeps suggesting I connect on linkedin with people whose only connection to me is messages through gmail – and it usually happens suspiciously right after I send and receive a few emails from that person. This behavior has in the past included people whom I know do not have a linkedin account, since it suggests that I “invite them to linkedin” – which means the other person cannot be allowing linkedin access to their emails, it must be through my linkedin account.
How do I keep linkedin from accessing my gmail contacts? How do I delete the list of contacts that linkedin has already harvested from my gmail account?
Thank you
————————————
Member (05/19/2016 11:46 CST)
Oh, and I also tried to use the interface at https://www.linkedin.com/connect… to remove synced sources but the only options I was given were to sync various sources (gmail, google contacts, google calendar), not remove them. Any help with this issue would be appreciated. Thank you
————————————
LinkedIn Response (05/19/2016 18:18 CST)
Hi M. Forrest,
I’m really sorry to hear about this and can understand your concerns. Please know that we’d never import contacts or send invitations without your permission.
It appears you may have sent out a number of invitations using the address book import feature on our site and inadvertently uploaded your personal address book. This feature has the potential to send invitations to your entire address book if the correct box isn’t checked.
Sometimes people don’t realize they’re sending invitations this way. If it helps, I can remove your imported contacts on my end and then you will stop receiving the prompts to upgrade to these members.
I look forward to hearing your response in order to further assist you.
Kelly
Consumer Support Specialist
————————————
Member (05/20/2016 15:57 CST)
Hi Kelly, Thanks for looking into this. I admit it’s possible that I may have used those tools you mentioned and I don’t remember doing so. However, I certainly haven’t done so in the past year, and during that time linkedin has recommended some contacts which I’ve only started emailing a few weeks and months ago. Is it possible that linkedin has continued access to my gmail contacts or account? If so, I’d like to remove that access. I don’t see anywhere on your website which indicates that my account currently is granting access to my gmail contacts, but linkedin seems to be accessing my gmail contacts anyway. Either way, I’d also like linkedin to verify whether you have any imported contacts associated with my account, and then delete them. Thank you, Forrest
————————————
Hi Forrest,
Thanks for your reply. What you have encountered is that the people you may know could have been uploaded to LinkedIn through auto authorization if you had at any time your LinkedIn account open and accessed any of your emails through the same browser. I am very sorry for any inconvenience and frustration this has caused. If you would like, I can delete your imported contact information from the address book upload that you completed.
In order from preventing this from happening again, you will want to be careful to not open up your personal email address in the same browser when you have your LinkedIn account open.
Please let me know if you would like me to remove/delete your imported contact information from your account.
I look forward to hearing your response in order to further assist you.
Kelly
Consumer Support Specialist
————————————
Member (05/23/2016 11:40 CST)
I was not aware that linkedin can automatically access my emails if it’s open on the same browser. How can I revoke this “auto authorization”? I don’t remember ever authorizing anything like this.
————————————
Hi M. Forrest,
Thanks for contacting me back. Per the updated user agreement, this is now a common occurrence. There is not a setting to specifically turn this feature off. The only way to truly prevent this from happening again is to open up those items in separate browsers. We are not doing this to invade your privacy, we are doing this to assist you in growing your network. We don’t share this information with anyone else and is particular to your account only.
Again, I am very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Please let me know if there is anything else that I can help you with.
Thank you,
Kelly
Consumer Support Specialist
Is this acceptable behavior? To spam me constantly with personalized requests for a service I have never used and don’t want to use?
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G
Follow me on Twitter.
Wow
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Aloha friend…I have been reading your blog for quite awhile and catch some of your interviews on a few websites…not trying to be mean nor condescending..Michael how can you even be remotely Surprised by ANY of this…? thanks for reading,aloha
Not so much surprised as I am explaining specifically what is happening, partly in case others are wondering.
If they can do that in a web browser with one site…is it possible they are scraping other things while you have their site open and you are using other sites?
The same thing happens to me and I never had a LinkedIn, Facebook, or tweeter account and have been on computers since 1979. When someone on LinkedIn ask you to befriend them they give your email to LinkedIn to ask you to join.You can not trust any of them. I just unsubscribe when I get one of these messages and they go away for a while.
Thank you for posting this, Michael. I’m not surprised, sadly.
What I can’t figure out (but maybe some of your other readers can) is this:
My email (yahoo) account was open. I opened up a tab for a non profit organization, StudentsFirst, which I had never visited before. I merely looked around the website, did not request info or type anything.
Shortly (minutes) thereafter, I received an email from StudentsFirst, soliciting a donation. I was astonished! I called the organization immediately and the receptionist (who was not a techie) had no idea how this happened. I told her that this raised a serious red flag for me and that while I had not considered donating at the time, this made sure that I never would.
Btw, thanks so much for posting that important piece about the St. Louis library incident. Called the library staff to thank them. Now, that’s an organization I will donate to!
Best,
Shannon
You’re welcome Shannon, but it was Kansas City. I hope you called the right library!
Whoops! I did! Btw spoke directly to the librarian who said the library was being awesome about supporting him. (no need to publish, for your info only!)
Why NOT to use web-based email accounts and instead use a separate email client. You can also do this on your phone as well.
Please go onto linkedin and post this so everyone knows. This is outrageous stealing emails if you have a browser open on their site and have your email open, they could just take your emails and associate them with your account, and there is no way to tell them not do this. And no one knows. The same thing happened to me. I am furious, i will help you post this will go viral on linkedin its a serious invasion of privacy! They should only have the contacts i agree to give them! Nit scrapin my oages collecting personal emails and putting them into my business network and then having these people pop up as recoomendations. This needs to be shared on linked in as content – people will go crazy!