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Comment by stuff4ben | Hacker News Reader

But is this really a problem? LinkedIn is "advertising for yourself", presumably to get a job. With the exception of my phone number, I'm ok with the world knowing this information about me. It's the equivalent of a phone book and I'm putting myself out there and advertising myself in the hopes of getting a job.

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if you look at the sample image there are data points like "inferred salaries", "inferred years of experience", number of connections (and possibly other stuff) that somebody may or may not have wanted to advertise to the universe.

the leaking of semi-public data (over which we may have some control) alongside "inferred bits" and behavioral data (over which we don't) and combined with other legally or illegally obtained sources means that individuals are facing an information environment where long held assumptions about who knows what no longer hold.

lots of people still don't seem to realize what a crushing downgrade it is in all senses (economic, social, political) to be a transparent, mined entity with no sovereignty

What do you think is a good solution to this problem?

there are many ways to skin this cat if one was motivated enough to put their mind to it... but some suggestions anyway:

never have 700M profiles in one place. decentralization by default - large scale centralization only when absolutely needed and with rigorous controls as a public (or highly regulated) good.

never create portable / tradeable behavioral profiles that can be linked to individuals. what can happen will happen and is happening.

never offer trivial free services in exchange for significant private data. establish a respectful and healthy client/user relation without hidden third parties in the loop

I feel like the lines between a data leak and large scale scraping are getting blurred. At least in their impact for the user. Which is a bad thing as it will support the "so what" attitude that many people have toward their data.

It is a fact that all this data is already being crawled by bot nets.

If all data is leaked at once, this is similar to a large scale successful crawling of the site. At least from a user perspective.

So I get what you are saying. It sounds more dramatic than it actually is. It is still a massive leak. But from a pool that scummy businesses have been thoroughly scooping from already anyway.

Are these details publicly-available for the scraping though?

I'd be suspicious it was an employee with internal access to the data or someone who had hacked such an employee's computer. Of course they wouldn't admit such criminal act and risk getting caught, they'd claim a route anyone could use.

If the geolocation data is fine grained I would hope not.

My understanding is that it was "advertise yourself within your network". I dont want my name and face on a billboard for just anyone....

Also, keep in mind that LI has contact information and passwords people might re-use

Not really. Anyone who has an account can see profile. It's been a go-to for journalists for a long time.

You can set your profile to only be viewable to connections or second degree connections

You can also "hibernate" your account to disable it completely until you log in again. I just did this; my go-forward strategy will be to resurface and collect connections anytime I switch jobs, then hibernate it again when I no longer need it. That way it can serve its only real function of being a face for my job applications, and can be made invisible all other times.

More than half the value is letting people reach out to you when you're not actively looking. Otherwise let them use your resume.

It’s good to hear that it hasn’t affected you personally, but the severity of the leak must be assessed based on the privacy that was reasonably expected by users. LinkedIn has not met their duty to protect their personal information and that alone is enough to say: yes, it’s a problem.

Yeah I agree that LI hasn't done a great job of protecting their data from being misused. But that's the nature of social networks though, data is to be shared in order to build the network. As another commenter said, just don't put in anything you don't want people to find out. Absolute privacy cannot be achieved when you give out your information willingly. To paraphrase WOPR, "the only way to win the game is to not play."

What about your job hunt status, openings you've applied to, DMs?

My thoughts exactly. Given the nature of LinkedIn there is absolutely nothing I'd put there that I didn't want others to see.

Isn't the revealing thing about these leaks not the data that you provided but the data they have associated to you from other means?

I imagine most people do not share your attitude, me included. Especially profile sections set to private staying that way needs to be trusted.

And emails not falling in the hands of spammers is always nice.

> With the exception of my phone number

You can get it from 2019 FB leak of 533M accounts, dumped for free this April. My boss is in there and phone number is correct.

I'm there and even received few scam calls from foreign countries. Ironically, I cancelled my account in 2019.

Well I can see your point, but this is not exactly the same.

As a thought experiment imagine that someone now builds a website called Linkedout and they post your profile with a layover animation resembling a big red stamp which reads 'Slacker'. I guess you are not OK with THAT information about you.

Oh funny I actually thought about same name

LinkedOut: A decentralized 'paid' job profile site for professionals, not recruiters. Where you decide who can see your profile/data and contact you.

I might just build this,but with a better name, lol

You might contribute to Flockingbird who are building that for the Fediverse.

https://flockingbird.social

Isn't that what someone that works at Slack? If they're getting basic employment details that badly wrong, then they're not very useful.

> LinkedIn is "advertising for yourself"

Not anymore, really. For years now you can't view someone's profile without logging in.

Yeah but the people who want to find you there have accounts.

I have no problem with people accessing my data, but only so long as it's people who have a valid reason to access that data. In the case of LinkedIn, I don't mind my connections, coworkers, and (reluctantly) recruiters seeing what's on my resume. I do mind a random hacker accessing that information, selling it to anyone who'll buy, and those people then using that data for things that probably aren't related to offering me employment.

How do you know someone accessing your data through the Web site is a recruiter?

I look their details up in this spreadsheet of 700 million people I've got.

Do you care to share some of your private messages here in this thread?

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