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by gizdan 1662 days ago
They should know because my email isn't available anywhere online for a reason. Every time I reply to ask where they got my email, they mention some service that scrapes emails based on LinkedIn addresses. This isn't okay. That's spam. They're clearly trying to avoid LI's platform for whatever reason (probably cost).

It's not just about blocking domains, it's about figuring out what those services are and yelling at them for scraping my data and assuming I want them to hold my email when I've not put those details online.

1 comments

Ah. At some point you allowed your email to be public. It was captured. And now is served up to paying customers.

You might have taken your email down now but you made it available at some point. LinkedIn scrapers cant make information that wasnt shared available. I'm not arguing that that means you opted in to receiving emails but if you made your email publicly available its odd to be upset when someone uses it to contact you.

The reason people circumvent LinkedIn could be cost but the cost of email tools are much higher than a LinkedIn Recruiter subscription and inmails. The reason people reach out via email is because it allows for easier drip campaigns/follow up emails, email template use, and the response rate is an order of magnitude higher.

I'm not trying to be an ass here. I'm trying to share the viewpoint of someone who is emailing you and why their intentions might not be as malicious you seem to interpret them.

Sure, except for the fact that this specific email is <firstname>.<lastname>@gmail.com and I have only ever used it when I've been directly in contact with companies after I've gone through the whole process, or when I've developed a relationship with the recruiters. I've never connected it to LinkedIn either. In addition, as I mentioned in my previous comment:

> Every time I reply to ask where they got my email, they mention some service that scrapes emails based on LinkedIn addresses.

Again, zilch to do with my email being allowed to be public.

Every time when I've reached out to these spam companies, they've mentioned scraping and guessing emails. I.e. if my name on Linked is John Smith, and they'll add john.smith@gmail, john.smith@outlook, j.smith@gmail, and some other common name formats.

It's ridiculous.