[cmccabe]

For some reason, a few people at HN seem to have a hard-on for criticizing LinkedIn. I never hear the same criticism of Facebook or Twitter here, even though their privacy policies are just as bad, or worse in many cases, and they also send bulk email.

I get spammed by all the social networks I've joined, and even by a few that I didn't join. I get mail from every newspaper or magazine I've ever subscribed to, and many that I never have. Condemning one business for doing this while praising another is just hypocrisy.

[DanBC]

> I never hear the same criticism of Facebook [...] here

Facebook is regularly criticised, often fiercely, for their invasive privacy policies.

[austinz]

As are Google and Apple (albeit not always for privacy). I think the only oft-mentioned companies I've seen that consistently get better-than-neutral sentiment are Tesla and SpaceX, although there are probably others I'm forgetting.

[girvo]

And that's because Musk is the closest we can get to a tech "rock-star" (ignoring the Blizzard guys who are actual rock-stars and play in a sweet metal band).

[grey-area]

I never hear the same criticism of Facebook or Twitter here, even though their privacy policies are just as bad, or worse in many cases, and they also send bulk email.

Intercepting email and inserting content is quantitatively different from sending bulk email. I think this programme is being criticised because it intercepts people's mail and inserts content - that's very different from receiving mail and leads to insecurity on several levels (they see your mail, sharing passwords, getting used to inserted content which can then be imitated for phishing).

Also people do criticise FB and Twitter here too, but the objection is not spamming.

[cmccabe]

"They see your mail." Ooh, scary. Email is effectively a postcard. It gets sent in cleartext all over the internet. If you think that email is even slightly private, you are misinformed. I don't see why I should trust LinkedIn any more or less with my emails than Google, Yahoo!, or any of the other companies that run regular old SMTP servers which process and store (possibly forever) tons of my email.

"sharing passwords" isn't a problem with this scheme because it doesn't use your password. It creates a separate IMAP account and links it to your regular account via OAuth.

"I think this programme is being criticised because it intercepts people's mail and inserts content" -- really? A sample comment is "they are spammers." Nothing there about man-in-the-middle, nothing there about email interception. I don't think most of the people bashing LinkedIn here even understand how Rapportive/Intro works.

The particular CSS exploit shown here seems like one that can and will be fixed. Obviously, there are other ways to do phishing via email, including just sending an email that looks like someone else's mail (remember: postcard). A lot of mail services are starting to filter spammy or fake-looking mail, so that may help.