Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

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Let me guess -- LinkedIn automatically and surreptitiously "opts you in" to sharing your email contact list and there's either no meaningful way to opt out, or the option is buried by people as skilled as those who buried Jimmy Hoffa, or it doesn't exist at all.

So they now can speak the half-truth that those malcontents who are suing them didn't find the opt-out option, therefore it was all right to exploit their contact lists.

One more thing. Given that a lawsuit is pending, it's extremely unwise to reveal one's defense in advance of the proceedings -- that can only help the other side. When a lawyer tells you to say nothing publicly about an upcoming legal action, you really should listen to him. This tells me that LinkedIn either doesn't have competent counsel, or they're in the habit of ignoring wise advice.

They're probably more worried about bad press than the payout for the case. The class action lawyers only care about their own fees. They'll probably get a settlement that involves giving some money to some privacy charity rewarding the lawyers and not actually doing anything to directly benefit the members of the class action.

I think the ramifications are bigger than that - heaps of services want unrestricted, virtually unaccountable access to our contacts and address books and quite liberally help themselves to it - like Path earlier this year found to be uploading everyone's address books to their servers.

A best case scenario for us will greatly limit the way and extent companies access our data.

Some services give it regardless of whether it's asked for - I'm specifically thinking of facebook here. I've done a couple of prototype apps with "login with facebook" functionality. Regardless of whether our app requests it or not, facebook automatically says that we're requesting "access to friends list" - that's just one of the minimum levels of things you get, even if you don't want them, and there's no way to not get it.

> They're probably more worried about bad press than the payout for the case.

That makes sense. But they have to weigh the pros of arguing the case in public, versus the cost of exposing their reasoning, such as it is.

Also, by saying they had the right to mine people's address books, but without explaining how they think they acquired the right, they risk a pretty big public backlash.

Exactly. Losing their spot as the business social network would kill them.

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