[steven2012]

I recently got access to a LinkedIn recruiter-level account, and it's frightening how much information recruiters have about someone. Not only can they look at anyone's linkedin profile, there are additional services (not affiliated with linkedin... I think) that keep a copy of everyone's linkedin profile, even if you delete it. They cross reference your linkedin profile with meetup, facebook, etc, to get an ultimate cyberstalking profile about almost anyone they want. I think it was called talentbin.com, but there are other sites as well.

Very, very creepy and this isn't even the NSA we're talking about, this is a recruiter.

[coldpie]

Reminder that most or all of that information was volunteered by the stalkee. If the information isn't put on the web in the first place, it can't be found. Be careful with what you make public, folks. If you put it on the web, it is as good as public.

(Obviously this doesn't apply for things like shopping profiles, but probably that's not what you were talking about.)

[peteretep]

    > talentbin.com

And the 500 million competitors to them. Cross-social-profile matching is pretty much a commodity service these days.

[mooreds]

Do you know what the common key was between these services? I bet it was email.

That's why I sign up for services with a custom email address, that is linkedin@domainname for linkedin, meetup@domainname for meetup, etc.

[ark15]

Will work for now but you are still following a pretty straightforward 'pattern' that the algorithms can easily catch up with if algorithm authors wanted them to. (i.e. if too many people start doing this)

I guess using random@domainname may work better?

[dhotson]

I found it a little bit ironic that one of the companies protesting NSA surveillance and collection of user data.. was LinkedIn.

https://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/

[x1798DE]

Hardly ironic. Companies that utilize customer data are the most at risk from reactions to government surveillance. Many people are much, much less concerned with a company having their data (which they will use to show you more effective advertising - i.e. things you actually want) than with the government having their data - which they are using in the explicitly adversarial process of determining if you are a criminal.

When the government forces Facebook, Google and LinkedIn to be complicit in their compromise of user data, people can no longer trust these companies to safeguard it, and it hurts the companies' bottom lines.