Hacker News Reader

Comment by qntty | Hacker News Reader

On a brighter note, I downloaded an archive of my LinkedIn data. The data set was less than half a megabyte and contained exactly what I had expected: spreadsheets of my LinkedIn contacts and information I had added to my profile.

Somehow I'm unwilling to believe that Linkedin is really an exception here. More likely they don't include all the data they have on you.

I downloaded my facebook data, and the only thing that I was surprised at is that they actually give you so much of the data they have on you. I expected them to redact most of it. Is it really reasonable to think that they don't have even more data than they let you download? They're not required by law to give it all to you, are they?

View on HN

Linkedin is worse than Facebook in terms of privacy. So many dark patterns on their site - someday their reckoning will come just as facebooks. Easier target too since it could hurt people’s jobs and careers.

My old boss loved to play big brother on us with LinkedIn. She'd get notified when we were updating our stuff, and I think she could see when we were messaging with recruiters/etc. I'm not entirely sure what the limits were with her upgraded account, but she wasn't good at hiding that she knew when her employees were looking for new jobs.

I used to always update my LinkedIn a few weeks before performance evaluation meetings. Was hoping the HR would notice and recognize retention risk. They were still surprised when I eventually quit, ha.

Interesting how someone like that most likely was the biggest cause of people looking for jobs in the first place. I know I would.

Definitely the things Linkedin do are so much worse and creepier, just by looking at the people they recommend me to connect to, the level of offline tracking they must be doing are creepy beyond imagination.

Facebook at times appears to be doing something similar. After spending a day in a conference room with a colleague that normally works from a different location, all of a sudden he was at the top of my "suggested friends" list.

I had a great one like this with LinkedIn recently - a client called me to discuss something and mentioned a third-party; I hadn't heard of them so asked if the client could send me some information; he sent me an email later that day with a link to the other company's web site, which I duly clicked and browsed around. The very next day, in my LinkedIn "People you may know" in the top row was a lead developer at that very same (tiny, otherwise totally unconnected to me) company.

We used the same temporal colocation analysis to find ships smuggling things at sea. ;)

Who is "we?" :)

It was one of many DARPA projects to see what can be done with the table scraps of open/unclassified data available. The ship beaconing data was in that category. As was uber sample data, backpage data, darkweb ecommerce, blockchain ledgers. We looked at ALL kinds of data, and tried fusing where we could. One target was human trafficking. https://www.google.com/search?q=memex+human+trafficking

I couldn't delete multiple connections at a time. So I deleted my LinkedIn account instead. LinkedIn really serves no purpose if you are not in HR.

When Microsoft acquired LinkedIn I suspected they will go for the top talent with this. Think about it:

Based on users' data and behavior, one can anticipate whether or not he/she is going to quit/leave his/her current job. Microsoft recruiters can then swoop in and offer him/her a job.

Or for example, Microsoft can essentially map all the top IT talents network and use this to its advantage.

The list goes on...

I had forgot the MS acquired it! Honestly it’s probably less bad than it was. Maybe in a few years we’ll hear about all the scrubbing they had to do to keep MS safe.

We joke at the office about going to update our linkedin after terrible meetings. In fact the act of interacting with that site at all, either from updates or clicking emails, is probably a sign I'm looking for greener pastures.

I'm not sure it would be really helpful. Not all jobs (on LinkedIn) are IT jobs, far from that.

The real advantage would be to map everyone and every company to get intelligence on the users and potential users of their products (Office 365)

>Linkedin is worse than Facebook in terms of privacy.

And that sucks since it's hard to have a professional life w/o one. I've known women who were stalked/harassed because despite otherwise being pretty locked down their harassers found their linkedin and used that to harangue them.

It's honestly not that difficult. I dropped my account, it served no value. Getting regular messages "to pick my brain" is a waste

Facebook's reckoning never came, judging by the laughable "grand inquisition" that happened this past week.

> Is it really reasonable to think that they don't have even more data than they let you download?

No. They have more data. They have lots more data. Browsing history for example via trackers.

And no, we (Americans) do not have any meaningful laws. Nothing. Nor do we have any rights to privacy. We have no right to know what personal private information is being collected, bought, or sold.

As a European, the situation is only slightly better for me. Formally I have some rights, and some things that are legal in the US may be illegal here, but that has not kept any company from doing it anyway. I have yet to receive better privacy in real terms, and hope GDPR will finally make the mass intrusions unprofitable, maybe even criminal.

There was the Bye Bye Facebook event here yesterday, 10k people from the Netherlands deleted their Facebook accounts.

Personally I'm waiting until may 25 to do this: I hope that after that date, Facebook will be legally required to really delete my data, and be liable if they don't. I'm afraid that before that date, they'll just hide that data from me, and continue adding to it by tracking, and continue selling it to advertisers outside the Facebook site.

Facebook and others will be legally required to put in a reasonable effort to delete data they don't have any overriding obligation (public health, legal proceedings, other public interest, etc.) or business need to keep.

This might turn out to be different from what a random person on the street might expect.

Can we just change our info to say we're residing in some protected part of Europe? I've already gone in and falsified all of the good stuff, it wouldn't hurt to 'move' again if it means they have to apply an extra layer of privacy/right to forget.

Under GDPR, entities are allowed to ask you to prove your identity and by implication that you actually qualify for rights under GDPR.

Thanks for that tidbit. It would be nice to be grandfathered in, I can see it being a huge PITA to ask millions of people for proof--which probably gives them even more sensitive data like a photo of an ID. I assume your privacy laws travel with you, so if you travel to/login from the US your privacy rights stay the same?

What kind of grandfather clause do you imagine? The law basically says that companies are allowed to make you prove it's your data you're trying to delete to deter people using it to delete that of others. They're also allowed to refuse or charge a reasonable fee if they can justify that the request is spurious, unduly burdensome, onerous, etc.

Yes, but obviously you've got nothing if you use an US-based service from the US. It's based around companies subject to EU laws, rather than any real notion of citizenship.

My guess with all of these sites is that they are willing to give me the data I gave them, but not the data they inferred about me or pieced together from other sources. My concern is that this data may be more sensitive and hold more potential for harm than what I gave them (since I was willing to share it with them in the first place).

Exactly. The number of "This is all of the data Facebook/Google/etc have on you" articles I've seen recently make me want to bang my head on the wall. They absolutely are not letting you download everything they have.

Not just articles, but forums posts as well. I suspect the worst. But hope these authors are just "uninformed".

There was also a rapid and noticeable shift in "public opinion" on Reddit in regards to Facebook/Zuckerberg from overwhelmingly negative to slightly positive just in time for Zuckerberg's hearings. I also suspect the worst here.

I've also personally been receiving downvotes here on HN for posting undeniable facts about Facebook (and the data collection practices of other ad companies), but that could just be a result of the numerous FB employees on this site trying to pull the wool over their and our eyes on behalf of their employer.

I fear the worst here. We hear stories about the armies of people in other countries. We can feel the presence of mainland influences in these threads.

When it comes to Facebook, assume the worst and in 6 months find out it was 10x worse

Yep, if there's any takeaway from here is that companies will gladly take multiple avenues and channels to lie to you.

1. Not providing tools to see or download your data

2. Simply not providing options to turn off data collection or pretending that the options available are complete.

3. Providing tools to see and download a portion of your data, pretending that it is complete

4. Pretending to delete your data on account deletion but retaining the data, or at least a portion of the data

5. Collecting more data than they say they do

6. Collecting data on people who do not directly interact with the company services

Anecdotally, I had a very strange experience with LinkedIn. I went to stay with my friend in another country for a few days and upon returning home, LinkedIn recommended his father as a connection - despite me never electronically contacting him. The friend I stayed with doesn't have LinkedIn nor have I contacted him over email or similar. My guess is that it must have been location based or because I connected to their WiFi - very weird.

Yes, my guess is either public IP or GPS colocation from phone apps, possibly even using the wifi AP name if you both had phones connected. If civilian GPS is good to a few meters, it's easy to look up who lives in that radius.

exactly... do not take at face value what these services deliver to you. I chuckled at the guy who assumed he deleted all of his FB data via a data scrapping client..

> They're not required by law to give it all to you, are they?

They are in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems

"They're not required by law to give it all to you, are they?"

Not sure about the law (which also changes from country to country) but even if they'd be required to give all users their data, it is possible that they keep a relevant slice of the results obtained by matching that data. Releasing all that data public could reveal the inner workings of their algorithms, so I'd understand if they would rather release what people gave them while keeping most of what they inferred from that information, which of course is where the real knowledge is.

In the UK, and possibly throughout the EU, they legally have to provide everything they have on you under the Data Protection Act for no more than a £10 administration fee.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com