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Comment by Beestie | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a linkedin acct. So imagine my shock when I "googled" myself and found a linkedin profile connecting my name to a company I presently have a consulting arrangement with (1099 not W2). I went ballistic and fired off an email to the consulting firm to take down the profile immediately or face legal action (a bluff). Couple days later, the company forwarded an email they received from linkedin confirming the profile had been taken down.

So this is just a heads up that even if you don't have a linkedin account, they will create one on your behalf so might better check (assuming you neither have nor want one).

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What's the path for that to even happen?

Are companies now commonly uploading lists of employees to LinkedIn? Is this happening automatically because you got an e-mail account from the company and the company runs on MS Office and you're identified as am employee within it? What triggered it?

This seems like somewhat of a scandal that deserves its own post, but it also needs a lot more details to be trustworthy and for people to understand what exactly is happening.

Also, was there some way for you to take ownership of the profile? Did it depend on verifying a certain e-mail address? Does it require you to get the company to remove it, or could you take ownership and then delete the LinkedIn account/profile yourself?

I rather suspect the information was siphoned to linkedin from the payroll company the consulting firm was using. While there are a zillion small consulting firms, there are a small number of firms which process their payroll (whether to employees or independent contractors like myself). I have no evidence to back this up but after thinking it through, it made more sense than every little mom/pop/medium size niche company all cooperating with linkedin vs a hand full of mega payroll consolidators selling aggregated lists to linkedin. Again, speculation on my part.

That is extremely disturbing to hear!

What is the benefit that the company derives from that? Kickbacks from LinkedIn? I'm not saying it is, or isn't, I don't understand what the benefit to be gotten from it is. It seems like a lot of effort by one party or the other, unless it is "baked in" to an MS account or whatever.

Also, as the person above had asked: did you have any option/ability to "take control" of the account, or did it have to go through the consulting company was using? It almost feels like someone had a fake ID card made for you. Not a drivers license, but something that would be of greater concern to the person on the ID (LinkedIn profile) than the company making it.

Interesting. That's a possibility... but how much information did the LinkedIn account have? Did it have your full job title? I'm not sure how much information is shared with payroll providers.

Again, there's no real reporting on the internet of LinkedIn creating profiles for people without their consent. If you have any documentation and details, this is the kind of thing worth posting here in full detail and/or contacting a journalist about. Of course, if it was in the past you might not have any of that info anymore.

It reminds me of that thing I had heard of people doing on Facebook years ago. Someone wouldn't have a Facebook account "yet", so one of their friends/family/whomever would create one on their behalf with an assumption that they were being helpful to the other party. "It's all ready to go once you want to login! I knew your email address, so just do a password reset when you start using it. You're welcome!"

I believe even an episode of South Park covered it.

The difference there being that, with the Facebook relationship status stuff, spouses were feeling societal pressure to show a public declaration and "proof" of their partners existence/mutual status. With something like LinkedIn though...does that same sort of pressure exist? Are Hiring Managers (or whomever) feeling some kind of professional pressure to "prove" how many real life people work with/for their company? Does getting the number of users marked as working for that company above a threshold give them secret, special privileges in some locked-off business area of LinkedIn? Or is it just pure clout chasing? It's very odd. It feels like a violation in some way I can't really articulate. "Compulsory volunteer account-to-ID association"? I don't know what to call that. It's gross.

We used to have to destroy org charts and handbooks so that our companies wouldn't get hacked, not they just throw that out the windows and act shocked when something happens.

Yeah. Generally companies would prefer their employee lists not not public. It opens them up not just to social engineering hacking, but also everyday poaching.

I understand why LinkedIn would want more profiles. Hard to understand why a company you work for would be cooperating with them. And if they have the power to take your profile down then they're aware of it. Very strange.

I’ve seen fake accounts created by bad actors attempting to pose as others for gaining remote employment. It’s possible that is what was happening, and the takedown was from LI taking down the profile from the bad actor.

Other times they would just link to real LinkedIn profiles, but the LinkedIn profile will say that they’re not actively looking and are a victim of id fraud basically.

It’s been a huge issue spotting candidates falsifying information since remote work took off unfortunately. They payout is if they can get at least 1 or 2 paychecks before being found out, they’ve made a good profit.

Of all the reading I've done on this story, your comment so far is the only post which would explain why linkedin is even doing this.

If anyone else as any more info on the why, please share.

Are you sure they took it down completely, not just removed from public eyes? Majority of LinkedIn income is from businesses, they might still sell it in some form (e.g. stats/aggregates).

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