[clue-talk] CLUE LinkedIn group

[Jed S. Baer]

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:11:20 -0600
David Rudder wrote:

> Personally, I like linkedin and I think it's a good idea to make a CLUE
> group.  Of all the social networking, it's the least intrusive.

I shudder to think of what the most intrusive would be. LinkedIn
encourages people to upload their entire Outlook (or whatever) address
book, so they can spam invites all over the place. If you ignore the
invite, they spam you some more. They also lie to their customers:

"Due to the communications standards on the Internet, when you visit the
LinkedIn web site we automatically receive the URL of the site from which
you came and the site to which you are going when you leave LinkedIn."

The 2nd half of that is patently false. They can view outclicks only if
they're specifically using JavaScript or some sort of beacon to capture
the data. It doesn't have anything to do with "standards" on the
internet. For that matter, it's certainly possible for a web browser to
not send referrer information, and I know of at least one case where
Galeon does not.

And, from their privacy policy: "All information that you enter or upload
about your contacts will be covered by the same terms of this privacy
policy as cover your own information." Oh hey, great. Uh, did I get a
chance to review and reject or accept their privacy policy when someone
else puts info about me into linkedin?

I can see the benefit of social networking. Any sites out there that
aren't run by lying spammers?

jed