[greatartiste]

I never thought I would say this but LinkedIn seems to have gone even further downhill than it was a few years ago. You know things are bad when even the low end recruiters seem to have left the platform. These days 90% of the contacts/connect requests I receive are from dodgy pension "advisors" trying to get their hands on my pension pot cash.

[heleninboodler]

Further downhill than secretly installing an IMAP proxy on your phone and hijacking all your email to go through it in a way that destroyed all TLS security to your real mail server? Impressive...

[skeeks]

That is a separate, standalone app, not the regular LinkedIn app

[heleninboodler]

This doesn't excuse the fact that the company did this.

[KaiserPro]

wait what?

[robin_reala]

I hadn’t heard of this either, but incredibly it turns out to be true: https://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-intro-doing...

[chipsa]

Though, I was thinking that same sort of technology might come in handy for people that wanted to have encrypted email, without having to use a special encrypted email app: proxy through an app that did the encryption and decryption, but didn't store anything.

[stefanfisk]

https://jordan-wright.com/blog/2013/10/26/phishing-with-link...

[heleninboodler]

Yeah [1], and that's not even mentioning that the motivation behind those questionable "engineering" decisions was to be able to read and modify all your emails, helpfully injecting linkedin content into them.

[1] https://threatpost.com/linkedin-intro-app-equivalent-to-man-...

[greatartiste]

No I must admit that is even lower than I thought they were capable of , yet somehow doesn't surprise me.

[ge96]

Not directly related, whenever I get a new connection request, it is hard to tell if a person is real. Particularly if I don't know them first hand. The job history can be fake and profile photo generated by some GAN. It sucks but yeah, then later on they pitch something to you.

[dorfsmay]

Why would you consider a connection from somebody you have not worked with?

[hedora]

I was early on a team that was > 100 people when I left years ago There's lots of assymetric memories of relationships, especially for people that joined in my last 6-12 months.

I'm sure a GAN picture that looked like a strong team member with a close-but-not-the-same name and lots of connections to people I knew well would fool me.

Also, the cost to me incorrectly friending such a person is much lower than missing a strong hire or new job opportunity.

Edit: Also, as someone hiring, you can't even reasonably ban people for this stuff. Some crappy recruiter database integration startup occasionally merges me with a coworoker, then spams out the fake profile. I've had my own company try to poach me before.

[peteradio]

Linkedin should randomly send people made-up requests. They could collect statistics on the gullibility or neediness of the person and sell it!

[ge96]

Yeah it's a good question, most of mine are direct or recruiters. You have someone with "franchise" in their title, guess what... you get pitched a franchise. Idk what I was thinking.

edit: part of it in my rationale is "being nice" but yeah I mostly use LinkedIn to get a job

[dorfsmay]

Recruiters typically have pro memberships meaning they can message you directly without being connected to you.

[ge96]

Yeah I mean I'm not searching for them, they're asking to connect to me

edit: ratio is about 25% recruiters

was interesting though I recently accepted a new role and out of the 30+ talks in a month about 95%+ were LinkedIn. The conversion for me was 10% actual interview phase, then where I actually got a job was Hired. -- some jobs wrong tech or I was not qualified for

[NonNefarious]

LinkedIn is replete with fake accounts. Look at the array of bimboes lined up down the right side of the page at any given moment, all "recruiters."

[greatartiste]

Yes I'm seeing those as well. The pictures are just a little to perfect & the job history non existent.

[lawgimenez]

Remember that huge hack that started when that person accepted a LinkedIn request. I forgot which hack it was.

[dmos62]

wait what?

[cpp_frog]

I could be wrong, but I think the story was contained here [0], where a chilean programmer was targeted through a LinkedIn face account set by north korean hackers.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/the-incredible...

[keyringlight]

There was also "Operation Socialist" [1] where the UK's GCHQ with the aid of the NSA hacked Belgacom, via phishing linkedin emails. Darknet Diaries also had an episode on it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Socialist

[lawgimenez]

I think this is the one. I read it in Darknet Diaries too but I thought it was a Chinese hacker.

[partido3619463]

Where else do you think people are going for informal networking / keeping up with old contacts?

(Ie just the messaging part)