LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916375

by lbpdev • 8 days ago

87 54 8 days ago

news.ycombinator.com

And Microsoft doesn't care.

d3Xt3r2• 8 days ago

I mean, LinkedIn themselves were pretty shady before the Microsoft acquisition - multiple privacy violations, email spam, even had a class action lawsuit against them. Microsoft never cared.

And anyone who set up a LinkedIn account knowing all this don't care either. I look at people who're still on LinkedIn the same way as people who're still on Facebook. They don't have my sympathies.

lbpdev• 8 days ago

Fair, I guess. So what's a safe site for candidates to find jobs? Indeed isn't much better.

d3Xt3r2• 8 days ago

Depends on where you live. Here in AU/NZ for example, Seek is pretty good, and I daresay just as good, if not better, in terms of job listings. And it doesn't have any of the social networking crap.

If there isn't a decent equivalent in your area, I'd say the next best option is to reach out to a bunch of recruitment agencies and leave your CV with them. Also create your own personal blog/site where you have your bio, examples of your work, and regular meaningful blog updates relavent to your field (which will improve search engine ranking and increase chances of companies reaching out to you).

But I reckon the best option generally is IRL networking, considering the current AI era - where recruiters are being spammed with AI-generated CVs, and they in turn are using AI to filter out CVs, so now there are specific AI tools to make the perfect CV matching a job description - but now everyone is using these tools, which makes it a nightmare for recruiters. So IMO the best option these days would be to make IRL connections.

smackeyacky• 8 days ago

My account is only there so nobody is tempted to squat there on my behalf. Perhaps a minor issue overall but worth considering

spragl• 8 days ago

I basically agree with you, and I have a profile on LinkedIn.

A number of companies only announce job openings on LinkedIn, and if you are looking for a job (as I am) you would handicap yourself by not having a profile there. HR departments around the World are infatuated with LinkedIn, unfortunately.

My strategy is to give LinkedIn a minimum of information, use it for job search, and filter away most of their emails.

I look forward to the day where I can close down my LinkdIn account. But until then I have to put up with it.

orionblastar• 8 days ago

There is also a Minecraft scam where the scammer takes over the Microsoft account. https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/1puiae0/scammers...

nickdothutton• 8 days ago

I really wish LinkedIn would collapse and close so that something useful could take its place. At the moment I feel like it's squatting the "business networking" square on the board, but I don't know what it would take to dislodge it. I wrote a little about this on my blog about a decade ago and I don't feel we are any closer to it being dislodged.

bryanlarsen• 8 days ago

Quite regularly I see people on HN post their alternatives to LinkedIn and all the other locked-in modern 3 sided marketplaces that are blights on the modern world.

And they all have the same problem LinkedIn has -- they don't fix the core incentive issues.

Because you know if any LinkedIn alternative ever becomes popular at some point they'll perform a rug pull to turn popularity into massive profit.

But they won't become popular because they first have to solve the trust issue.

And the trust issue is foundational. And has a solution -- it should be a non-profit and/or consumer co-op and/or producer co-op.

Which likely means it needs to be formed in Europe or Canada or someplace without the anti-co-op laws of the US that make it difficult for co-ops to raise capital.

And founders will have to be satisfied with solid six figure salaries instead of their dreams of becoming a billionaire.

beAbU• 8 days ago

Do you think LI's problem is innate to the platform, or it's users? How will an alternative professional social network make itself immune to the scourge of online 'business networking'?

I honestly believe the problem is inseparable from the social network itself. Either you have a space where people can connect and find jobs and nothing more, and you'll have zero engagement and no way to really fund the platform. Or you allow actual social networking (i.e. public posts) and then open yourself up for lots of engagement, and all the associated cancer that comes with that.

m4xp• 8 days ago

Users reflect the platform. You make reddit, you get echo chambers. You make 4chan, you get edgy contrarians.

Users that thrive in those enviroment stay, others leave. LinkedIn is a scourge to the job market, being force to publish your entire life for everyone to see to find a job is completely dystopic.

pugio4• 8 days ago

LinkedIn is one of the most annoying sites on the internet. Every time I mistakenly click a link, it automatically grabs my Google account and creates a new account and profile for me, which I then have to go in and delete. Yes, I finally figured out which arcane preferences settings across both LinkedIn and Google I had to tweak to stop this from happening, but I think it was only after ChatGPT was around to help me wade through the mess.

dlcarrier• 8 days ago

If you use Chrome, or many of its derivatives, you can log into the web browser itself, and many people don't even know they are doing so. It can leak a lot of data, more so if you use the 'sign in with…' feature on many web pages. On a phone, if you're logged into the phone OS you're logged into the included web browser, and an aftermarket web browser may still leak information from your phone login.

I don't log my phone OS or web browser into any accounts, so I don't have to worry about LinkedIn making fake profile pages, but Cloudflare pretty much always assumes I'm a bot, so there's a bit of a downside. Honestly, I'm probably better off not visiting most of the web pages it blocks me from.

realty_geek• 8 days ago

Sorry, I don't understand.

Somehow linkedin creates a new account (on linkedin? - so a brand new account?) without your agreement?

pugio4• 8 days ago

Yes, that is precisely what happened. Over and over again. Every time I had to delete it. It was something to do with the way they embedded Google login on the page.

The-Old-Hacker• 8 days ago

Yep, that happened to me too. The biggest joke was that LinkedIn forced me to create a password before I could delete the profile they'd created without my permission. This happened after I'd visited several LinkedIn links on my Pixel phone so they grabbed my Google email address and used that. Bear in mind also that I'd been retired for about six years at that point.

technion• 8 days ago

This isn't LinkedIn specific - the easily misclickable "one click to logon with Google" button showing up in browsers was a huge mistake and should never have existed. Reddit has started prompting too if you're not currently logged in, to just suddenly be logged in with Google.

pugio4• 8 days ago

This was worse than that. This was no click. It would literally do it without any intervention as long as I browsed to the page.

OptionOfT• 8 days ago

I hate that pop-up when I'm browsing around and it shows a popup: do you want to sign in to this website with your work Google account.

NO.

mgartin• 8 days ago

I recently started to receive emails with:

"New skill available: Puzzle solving"

Begging me to compete with colleagues. Oh, what they have become...

I have unsubscribed from their emails now.

spenvo• 8 days ago

Good luck actually unsubscribing from LinkedIn emails. The dark pattern they employ (or at least used to employ, for many many years) is to just periodically add new "categories" of email to send you, that you haven't yet unsubscribed from. Back in ~2015, out of frustration I changed my LinkedIn email to a throwaway

Zenul_Abidin• 8 days ago

I unsubscribed from LinkedIn emails but they still send me emails of people I should connect with.

Now debating whether I should delete it altogether.

atraac• 8 days ago

While I also dislike LinkedIn a lot, I unsubscribed once in the past and I haven't received a single email like that in years.

ozim• 8 days ago

Nothing that inbox rules can’t fix. I just pass all LinkedIn mails to dev/null on arrival.

karmakurtisaani• 8 days ago

"A [recruiter you connected with 3 years ago in hopes of getting job opportunities, but never heard from ever again] reacted to a post by [a person you've never heard of before]: What taking a long shit while my wife was screaming at my kids taught me about b2b sales.

Click here to read more"

psalaun• 8 days ago

Switching the feed setting from the default algorithmic curated one to chronological improves a lot. And unsubscribe people liking the kind of post you're mocking, too.

onion2k• 8 days ago

I'm willing to bet that "Daily Active Users" is one of LinkedIn's H1 OKRs. Putting a daily game on the site earned an SVP a fat bonus.

zeafoamrun• 8 days ago

When I see connections are wasting time playing LinkedIn puzzles I'm just embarrassed for them. Although I half expect it's just made up for engagement like fake profiles on dating sites.

ta8903• 8 days ago

It works fine as a containment site.

steve19772• 8 days ago

I sometimes check if someone is active on LinkedIn or not (as in, actually posting stuff). This is useful as a filter.

ajb• 8 days ago

A positive one, or a negative one?

mawadev• 8 days ago

Linkedin is a site where LLMs talk to each other

Surac• 8 days ago

Posts on linked in are 99% scam ans 1% finding out all is scam

ivolimmen• 8 days ago

I left the site over a month ago, I closed my account. I only receive weird emails from recruiters from it.

baranul• 8 days ago

And often, the person doesn't need nor are looking for a job, so are just getting continually spammed. Where if you are actually looking, you can email your personal list of recruiters, of companies and persons you actually know or were recommended by real life friends.

gehsty• 8 days ago

I find AI has destroyed it, even the posts by people should know better post fully ai written posts (Major renewable CEOs posting AI slop is very sad).

I block the feed and just use for messages and notifications. LinkedIn is a platform that I’ve had multiple job opportunities come through, shame to see it go into slop meltdown.

sixtyj• 8 days ago

LinkedIn was really good idea at the beginnings but as always what is for free you are a product.

After reading few LI posts full of “I am grateful” and “I am honored” or “Thank to my excellent team…” bla bla - you have to think that people in your circle became LI-infected as that jargon is not normal.

Nevertheless. There is an opportunity to start over with a new global professional network. LI concept still makes sense.

xhevahir• 8 days ago

That doesn't sound to me like a consequence of their free-as-in-beer business model. It sounds like an accurate reflection of business culture and the way people talk in that sort of milieu.

ggm• 8 days ago

Surely the headline should be LinkedIn humbled to be a cesspool of...

catoc• 8 days ago

Scammers I can deal with - it’s the humbled and honoured actual humans that made me finally ditch LinkedIn, for…. nothing, just peace of mind and less vomiting

bigpeopleareold• 8 days ago

I have been developing a collection of rather poor AI slop describing something technical, but nothing lately has been coming up on my feed!

As an aside, something that would get posted on LinkedIn from an external source of some salespeople or something I knew or have connections with having an article written up about them changing jobs. I fear I might have mentioned once I changed a job (not with the eye-sore of the standard images they provide though), but the long stories of how people spent X years, living the best time of their life, now needs to come to an end because they want to move to the next best time of their life, is tedious. I get it, you are enriched in your worklife. Don't rub it in.

But I am staying for the AI slop. It's just a stream of jokes, if they can come up in my feed again!

harrouet• 8 days ago

Thank you! Thank you for saying it out loud !

At the start, LinkedIn was great and you could really connect you to a vibrant community of former colleagues and weak relationships. I actually got fruitful introductions and evn job offers from those days.

Then, they wanted to become a social network. Because, you know, advertising... It started way before Microsoft.

We started to see "LION" (LinkedIn Open Network), it became a goal for some to have as many connections as possible. So, tons of connections, but no more answers to messages. No more introductions. Useless connections. LinkedIn encouraged that by allowing connection requests without knowing the email of the person. That's when spam started.

Then, messages became mostly irrelevant, simple commercial requests of people who did not give a sh*t who you were. I personally cut off all LinkedIn notifications from that day on. I guess a lot of people never read their messages anymore either, so it became impossible to get an introduction. What's a community worth when people cannot communicate with each other?

Then came the "let's be Facebook" idiotic strategy. People would post and repost other people's content, pure fantasies with no link to reality. 25-year-olds became management or strategy gurus. No more skills, only pretention. Add AI to that and you've got the most useless feed ever.

To add insult to injury, the mobile app has got the worst UX you can find, full of counter-patterns, buggy, slow, you name it.

And yet, they manage to charge $11000/year to headhunters. Or to sales reps. Or to advertisers.

We need a LinkedIn competitor.

vivid242• 8 days ago

If Instagram is bad for teenager‘s mental health, then what is the effect of LinkedIn on adults?

schmookeeg• 8 days ago

This title could have stopped at the fourth word.

lovevibescannon• 8 days ago

The best thing to do with a LinkedIn account is to delete it and never look back.

Cthulhu_• 8 days ago

I wouldn't mind getting rid of it, but all of my jobs have come through Linkedin recruiters so far.

It's also in part because any job advert I've seen is either intimidating (long list of skills required that I don't have), or they have a salary indication that's too low for me.

There seems to be a huge dropoff in job adverts after "senior developer with >5 years of experience". I have 15, but I'm not a manager or anything. But also the number of job openings for those are very limited, and I'm of the opinion that people should grow into a role like that instead of be hired into it.

ozlikethewizard2• 8 days ago

You've got a chicken and egg problem now though, how do you get the senior devs to grow the juniors if you cant hire any seniors?

kentich• 8 days ago

My account just was stolen. I received a couple of push notifications on my smartphone which I didn't react, and then received an email notification that a new email address was added to my account. And then I lost access to the account. What a piece of crap LinkedIn is.

hackerbeat• 8 days ago

LinkedIn is a cesspool in general.

ChrisArchitect• 8 days ago

Related recently:

AI content is everywhere on social media, especially LinkedIn

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48847940

p2hari• 8 days ago

I am also amused at how people are still using it in its current context. Like some of the recruiters and companies want to have access to your linkedIn. They themselves use it as it is good for their own SEO, a nice emoji on their corporate website, push employees to be on the platform. Well I think the site also tries to do a lot to leverage on the users presence there and it is working for them. Q3 FY2026: Revenue increased 12% year-over-year (9% in constant currency).

LinkedIn has job boards, sales navigator and a bunch of things(ads, learning etc). We as users are paying them and also giving them data and they are harvesting on this data. They already have their AI to generate posts for you and all you get is infinite scroll of garbage like Tiktok or instagram. It is bound to pollute when you are doing a lot and trying to make shit load of money through it.

I think many have mentioned that the alternatives are also not addressing the right problems of LI.

But I have been observing the alternatives that have been showing up and of course it does not do justice for a professional network. Its my 2 cents and I can say this with my own conscience as I have built a couple of social networks across the last decade and have had considerable success. Maybe it is time to roll up my sleeves and take a jab at it. :). If anyone is interested to join just DM me and if we hit it, I am willing to angel invest and start a true professional network.

itsveryterry• 1 day ago

My company was dealing with constant fake websites and impersonation accounts targeting our users so eventually we hired this company ChainPatrol to help us with this. One of the most surprising finds that they reported back to us was the amount of fake accounts on LinkedIn that were impersonating our staff. And we barely thought to look at LinkedIn, but there were scammers fake recruitment posts that we were glad to be rid of.

Look them up I think they have a reporting page if you come across more of these

LinkedIn is a cesspool of scammers and identity theft

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