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:
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