LinkedIn ‘Intro’duces Insecurity

http://www.bishopfox.com/blog/2013/10/linkedin-intro/

by shenoybr • 13 years ago

565 155 13 years ago

bishopfox.com

csmatt• 13 years ago

LinkedIn just seems overwhelmingly sleezy to me. How do they keep getting away with this stuff?

cowboy_coder• 13 years ago

HN is a huge LinkedIn fanboy site. Surprised to see this.

tedunangst6• 13 years ago

People tell LinkedIn "Please, please, pretty please build something that lets me view LinkedIn contact info while reading email on my phone." LinkedIn builds it.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 13 years ago

People tell LinkedIn "Please, please, pretty please build something that lets me view LinkedIn contact info while reading email on my phone."

Did they? Did they really?

stephp• 13 years ago

Right? Are they purposely trying to come off like a Disney villain? Absolutely everything they do is ruthless and aggressive. If you sign up for an account now, they email everyone you know. It just happens; even if you try to avoid it. Then they ask for a second email address.. you know, in case the first.. goes inactive suddenly? People fall for that, thinking LinkedIn is legit enough to be trustworthy.

I deleted my account forever ago, but I get emails constantly saying so-and-so wants to connect with me. After the first 3-5, I looked into it. Nope-- no one's trying to contact me through LinkedIn at all. Just LinkedIn doing its thing.

tedunangst6• 13 years ago

you know, in case the first.. goes inactive suddenly?

Yes, exactly. In case you signed up using your work email, like practically everybody does, and then one day find yourself not working where you used to work.

chc2• 13 years ago

Getting away with what? Can you tell me what they should have done to offer the same end-user functionality in a way that would not seem "sleazy" to you?

orenmazor• 13 years ago

seriously? this is what Intro is? how is it not a bigger deal?people get upset over the littlest Facebook changes, but something this big barely shows up?

viraptor• 13 years ago

Probably because you have to explicitly enable this. With Facebook changes you don't get the choice.

pavel_lishin2• 13 years ago

Good thing I use gmail.

drp4929• 13 years ago

Good for you. Google Tells Court You Cannot Expect Privacy When Sending Messages to Gmail http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/google-tells-cou...

pavel_lishin2• 13 years ago

I was being ironic.

dudus• 13 years ago

This is incorrect. Completely out of context and actually quite the opposite to what happened.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130814/14262524177/

ctide2• 13 years ago

What's the difference between this and using an app such as Mailbox?

tedunangst6• 13 years ago

Intro doesn't have a waiting list.

uptown• 13 years ago

Asked the same question, but nobody answered. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6601179

ctide2• 13 years ago

I mean, Mailbox literally does the same thing (editing your messages on their backend -- http://www.mailboxapp.com/blog/?p=1#javascript-now-filtered-...) and no one cares. LinkedIn does it and the Internet goes shit crazy.

dec0dedab0de• 13 years ago

More people know what LinkedIn is.

baddox• 13 years ago

And, perhaps more importantly, people don't like LinkedIn.

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

What's the difference between this and using an app such as Mailbox?

IMHO, for what it's worth, this is why I would never use Mailbox.

On the HN thread for the blog post announcement yesterday, tptacek said "I don't care who the company is, or how trustworthy you think they are: avoid giving third parties credentials to your inbox."[0]

I would agree with that above statement - whether it's a company with a good reputation for security or a bad one (or even a nonexistent one), that's way too much power to give to any third party.

Remember that when we talk about security being about trust, it's not only about trusting their intentions, but also their power and ability. Mailbox has access to inboxes of thousands of people, some of whom have incredibly valuable emails in their inbox. Combine that with the number of services that use email as a means for authentication, and you have an incredibly attractive target for an attacker.

For what it's worth, I should mention that I've been working on a self-hosted product that provides the functionality of Mailbox/Boomerang, but without the privacy and security implications of using a third-party: https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/go-yo

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6600879

furyofantares• 13 years ago

There is at least one difference: Mailbox only supports gmail, and as such only asks for oauth credentials with permissions to read from and write to your inbox, not username/password. Linkedin does the same thing with gmail (and google apps) but they also support mail services that don't have this support.

mitchelllc• 13 years ago

I guess Mailbox will support other email soon

grinich• 13 years ago

In terms of access to your mail data, there is no difference. The Oauth token you grant is operationally equivalent to an IMAP password.

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

Nothing, and that's why I won't use either.

etchalon• 13 years ago

This is ridiculous. LinkedIn is offering a feature, optionally, to users who chose to install it. They have been upfront about how it works. If you don't like how it works, don't use it. Problem solved, myopic holier-than-thou rant avoided.

hdevalence• 13 years ago

Do you honestly believe that most users who will install this will fully understand the ramifications of that choice? if yes, why do you think that, in spite of all the evidence that most users are clueless about security? If no, then in what sense are they really giving consent, if that consent is not informed?

miguelrochefort6• 13 years ago

Maybe we should also ban junk food. I mean, I'm sure many people don't "fully understand the ramifications of that choice".

chc2• 13 years ago

By this rationale, almost nobody could ever install any software at all. In practice, LinkedIn's software may be a blunt instrument that I would not want to use, but the vast majority of software really is run on faith based on the provider's reputation. (And yes, it does sometimes bite people, even with things that are not LinkedIn Intro.)

lessnonymous2• 13 years ago

I don't get why this is any different to anything else. What's to stop Microsoft backdooring the next Outlook, MSWord or Windows itself? Why is there so much ZOMG-FUD over this from LinkedIn than there is over anything else?

"Most users" blindly type the same password into Facebook that they do for Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, OK Cupid, eBay and PayPal. Any of those services can (and do) get hacked and the password opens all the other services. Should we shut them down too?

thex86• 13 years ago

Problem solved, myopic holier-than-thou rant avoided.

There will be many many people who will use it and won't be aware of all these facts. It is important to discuss these things so that everyone knows and possibly, stays away. If you don't know what it does, you may install it. See - it goes full circle.

pionar• 13 years ago

It's not just that. If I, as a non-Intro using person, email someone who uses Intro (whether I know this or not), LinkedIn has that email.

edwintorok• 13 years ago

shenoybr• 13 years ago

I wonder how this affect BYOD to work. Corporations would be furious to have their email content scanned by linkedin.

natekh• 13 years ago

I'm not saying 1 bad turn deserves another, but this is no worse than what any company operating at scale does when they serve https through a gateway service (Scrubbers, CDN, whatever).

webhat• 13 years ago

Nicely stated, what I didn't see mentioned was the iframe it introduces into the mail. It can use this iframe to collect all kinds of additional data about you.

In the first instance I thought this was an app that was running in the background on your phone, I would have called that doing the impossible. This is just a MITM, and not a very good one at that.

kevinpet2• 13 years ago

I wonder if they called it "intro" to make it impossible to google for so that no one can ever figure out what they're agreeing to when they install it.

What does the sig it appends look like? I will have to make sure to never send email to anyone who has the tell-tale "I opt into spyware" flag.

lispm• 13 years ago

To celebrate this, I removed LinkedIn apps from my devices.

miguelrochefort6• 13 years ago

Do you expect some kind of reward? Sheep of the year maybe?

astrange• 13 years ago

There's no need to be mean to people doing something you agree with.

frewsxcv• 13 years ago

Why not just delete your account as well? I deleted mine a year ago and I have no reason to look back

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

1. Attorney-client privilege.

Really? I guess you better have your own SMTP server set up then, or hope your email provider is willing to go to bat for your rights...

8. If I were the NSA…

Yeah, it sounds like they definitely have needed it so far...

5 other of the things are basically the same point, remade in 5 different ways. This is a really weak list. There are certainly concerns, but most of these problems are symptomatic of our email system as it is. And have we all forgotten how crazy everyone went when we found out google was going to start advertising in Gmail?

andrewfong4• 13 years ago

Incidentally, many lawyers and law firms run their own mail servers for precisely this reason.

tedunangst6• 13 years ago

I think there's more to it than that. They want audit trails and backups, they don't want you reading email from unapproved devices, etc.

sneak• 13 years ago

Giving away email credentials to a third party service, regardless of reason, should be both covered in your internal training materials, as well as be maintained as a firing offense.

This is really just a case of well-branded spearphishing. You should already be protecting against that.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

This is really just a case of well-branded spearphishing.

Spearphishing is distinguished from phishing more generally by having very narrow, specific target selection.

If we are going to look for a analogies to techniques of catching fish, this is more weir phishing than spearphishing.

scott_karana• 13 years ago

It's more subtle than that, since the "Intro" iOS profile simply sets up a proxy.

This would take about three clicks from an end-user, and at no point do they knowingly disclose their passwords...

joe_the_user• 13 years ago

This is really just a case of well-branded spearphishing. You should already be protecting against that.

Well really, it's somewhere between generic phishing and tightly targeted (spear) phishing.

But the thing you have to remember about "phishing", about "spear phishing", about "social engineering" and about the cons that con-artists have been pulling since before computers existed is you are never just protected from this since every social con is based on exploiting a reflexive, habitual response and the con-artist will always find those no matter how people are simply trained (indeed, the more robot-like you make people's reactions, the more reflexes the con-artist has to work with).

So basically, any serious organization has to keep on top of the new threats coming. Every organization has to warn it's people not to do what they already ought to know better than to do.

Eternal vigilance... Reminds me of something else.

jmadsen2• 13 years ago

Are Linkedin still working out of Mom's garage? Do they not have a single person on staff capable of looking at the current environment regarding internet privacy and say, "Uh, guys...maybe put this one on ice for a year..?"

brymaster2• 13 years ago

Yeah one would hope these guys had some kind of ethical compass but history of Big Data (Google, FB, ad networks and their ilk) shows otherwise. Everyone in "social" just wants their Fuck You Money and "fuck users" because they're the product. Apathy and subversion of the web from the big players or anyone with a Facebook Jr biz is why the surveillance state exists.

"Silicon" Valley is working on spy tools and innovative ways to get more people to click ads.

lambda2• 13 years ago

Remember, LinkedIn has grown so much in part because so many people are willing to hand over their email passwords so LinkedIn can take a look at their contacts.

LinkedIn knows exactly how many people will hand over full control of their email if it means that they have a better chance of finding a better job.

jmadsen2• 13 years ago

Think I have to agree with you on that. Despite all the umbrage from HN, etc crowd, they prolly know it isn't really hurting them & the financial rewards are great.

Just doesn't seem like the greatest marketing strategy at the moment :-)

csense• 13 years ago

Do they not have a single person on staff capable of looking at the current environment regarding internet privacy and say, "Uh, guys...maybe put this one on ice for a year..?"

They probably do. And that guy probably got overruled by another guy who said, "Forget that naysayer and instead think about how much more aggressively we can market ourselves and how much more money we can make..."

mcenedella• 13 years ago

"LinkedIn Founder says 'all of these privacy concerns tend to be old people issues.'"

The bit about privacy starts at the 13 minute mark.

tonylemesmer• 13 years ago

So make a plugin for your email client which raises a little Intro flag when you receive an email from an Intro user.

ig19• 13 years ago

Well lets take these one-by-one:

-------------

1. Attorney-client privilege.

I'm guessing most law firms use third party email servers, anti-virus, anti-spam and archive/audit systems which this would also apply to. It would also apply if you're using Raportive, Xobni or the like (or integrated time-tracking, billing, crm, etc.).

-------------

2. By default, LinkedIn changes the content of your emails.

Irrelevant. Unless you read your emails in plain text every modern email client changes how email is displayed.

-------------

3. Intro breaks secure email.

Yes. Except iOS mail doesn't support crypto signatures anyway.

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4. LinkedIn got owned.

Yes. LinkedIn adds an extra point of vulnerability.

-------------

5. LinkedIn is storing your email communications.

Well metatdata but yes.

-------------

7. It’s probably a gross violation of your company’s security policy.

Yes. As is using Linkedin itself. Or Dropbox. Or Github. Or Evernote. Or Chrome. Or any enterprise software that uses the bottom up approach.

-------------

8. If I were the NSA…

The NSA has access to your emails if they want them anyway. Email isn't a secure protocol against a well funded adversary.

-------------

9. It’s not what they say, but what they don’t say

This looks like a semantic dispute, but it doesn't look any more vague than say Google's privacy policy. Companies in certain circumstances are legally required to provide access to information.

-------------

10. Too many secrets

These all seem to be questions that can either be answered by testing or ones that LinkedIn would probably be happy to disclose, but unlikely to be major issues to mainstream users.

-------------

So fundamentally it comes down to two points, granting Linkedin access to your email creates a new point of attack and Linkedin themselves might use your email in ways you find undesirable.

So it's essentially a trade-off for the benefits you get from the app versus those risks. For a personal account which you use for private emails, personal banking, etc. the evaluation is obviously going to be very much different from say a salesperson's work account which they use for managing communication with leads.

In the later case they may already be trusting LinkedIn with similar confidential information and already use multiple services (analytics, crm, etc.) that hook into their email so the additional relative risk might be smaller.

As people with technical expertise we shouldn't use scare-mongering to push our personal viewpoints upon those with less expertise, but rather help people understand the security/benefit trade-offs that they're making so they can decide for themselves whether to take those risks.

It's important to treat the wider non-technical community with respect and as adults capable of making their own judgements and not as kids who need to be scared into safety.

smkelly• 13 years ago

Regarding your #3 point: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4979

iOS supports S/MIME.

ig19• 13 years ago

Fair enough, assuming that Intro breaks the S/MIME support (which I'm guessing that it does) then it adds the risk that users using S/MIME can't verify the integrity of mail in the app. So that's something else that S/MIME users should evaluate when judging the risks.

alwillis• 13 years ago

Just for completeness sake, there's also GPG for iOS as well: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/opengp-lite/id405279153?mt=8

lessnonymous2• 13 years ago

Shhhh! Don't bring rationality into this HN anti-LinkedIn Circle-jerk!

brymaster2• 13 years ago

Shhhh! Don't bring rationality into this HN anti-LinkedIn Circle-jerk!

That's a reddit-level comment.

People with technical, ethical or privacy concerns are just as relevant to the discussion. LinkedIn already has a shady history in terms of unauthorized data slurping, privacy and handling of users. No one has to swallow what they're offering now as altruistic if they don't want to.

Plenty of concerns indeed...

6.5 Million LinkedIn Password Hashes Leaked

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4073309

LinkedIn sued by users who say it hacked their e-mail accounts

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6425444

Your iPhone calendar isn’t private—at least if you use the LinkedIn app

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/your-iphone-calendar-is...

LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680680

LinkedIn opts 100 million users into sharing information with ads

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2872030

LinkedIn is Evil

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=220138

LinkedIn was also pulling down your contacts/address book through that iOS flaw just like Path and several other apps were at the time.

ohazi2• 13 years ago

It's important to treat the wider non-technical community with respect and as adults capable of making their own judgements and not as kids who need to be scared into safety.

I think the technical community gets particularly worked up over email security for the same reason that many scientifically literate people get violently angry at the anti-vaccination crowd. Being lax about vaccination requirements can compromise herd immunity, just as allowing other people to hand over their email credentials can potentially compromise my email security if I ever have to communicate with them.

In this case, I think the technical crowd is largely justified in their outrage. Even though any adult should be able to exercise their own judgement, they're not making their decision in a vacuum. Their decision affects others, so those who care have a vested interest in encouraging them to choose wisely. There's a negative externality at play here.

ig19• 13 years ago

Emails should (admittedly they're often not) be treated like postcards, they're not secure. They'll go over the wire in plaintext, they'll be read in public, etc.

Most businesses which actually require secure messaging will tend to use self-hosted web based email (like most banks do), encrypted messaging (Salesforce Chatter, Reuters Messenger) or secure virtual deal rooms.

eball• 13 years ago

To me the bigger news was that iframes in emails are run inside mail clients. Anyone know if other mail clients do this or is it just the one in iOS?

thefreeman• 13 years ago

I would really like to know this as well. I use gmail, which by default blocks images from loading unless explicitly allowed. I would be pretty upset if I knew that people could insert hidden iframes and achieve the same goal without it at least prompting me. Unfortunately I can't seem to figure out how to write html email from the gmail web interface and I don't feel like installing an email client just to test it out.

zimpenfish• 13 years ago

I'd put money on this being fixed/removed/blocked in 7.0.4/7.1.

RegW• 13 years ago

Just tried it in Thunderbird with a gmail account, it doesn't render the contents of the iframe unless you click the "Show remote content" button.

Interestingly, will then display images if that is in the src attribute but still doesn't render https://google.com.

latj• 13 years ago

1. A law firm paying for 3rd party email hosting is not the same as every employee routing their mail through some random website.

2. Executing software on your own device to reformat content is not the same as every employee sending their content out to a random website to have the content reformatted.

5. Please identify yourself and tell us how you know that Linkedin will not store the content of messages in the future.

I had to stop reading at #8. Now I think you are just being sarcastic.

est• 13 years ago

every modern email client changes how email is displayed.

The point is, Linkedin is a third-party app. It broke the sandbox mechanism in iOS.

kevinpet2• 13 years ago

7. It’s probably a gross violation of your company’s security policy. Yes. As is using Linkedin itself. Or Dropbox. Or Github. Or Evernote. Or Chrome. Or any enterprise software that uses the bottom up approach.

I doubt I could even find a company that prohibited accessing LinkedIn from a work computer anymore. Many don't disallow installing software either.

If you truly believe what you wrote, you almost certainly believe accessing work email from a personal device is prohibited at typical companies. Maybe this is true at large companies, but not anywhere I've worked.

Your argument has no validity. You claim that it's absurd for IT to differentiate between "sending your email to your phone" and "sending your email through a third party with no connection to email deliverability and no business relationship"

tomasien• 13 years ago

You doubt you could find a company that prohibited accessing LinkedIn from a work computer? In that scenario, how hard would you be trying? Many companies I know don't let their employees upgrade their IE from 6 or 7 (which is where that market share comes from), I sincerely doubt those companies are letting employees on LinkedIn.

onethree• 13 years ago

obviously you've never worked in any industry that has regulatory obligations. I work for a bank, on the team that looks after blocking all of this. We don't allow linkedin. We don't allow installing arbitrary software. We don't allow accessing personal email from work devices or vice versa. Regulators can, and will, fine you for doing these things without consulting them.

ig19• 13 years ago

Apple prohibits developers from listing details of what they're working on on their linkedin profile for trade secret reasons.

Countless companies prohibit salespeople from connecting to potential leads on linkedin to prevent it leaking to competitors.

I'm guessing you've not worked in enterprise because it's pretty normal to have a company policy on "bring-your-own-device" (typically companies will only allow access from devices that meet security requirements on password, anti-virus, etc. often they'll also require the ability to remotely wipe your device)

andrewfong4• 13 years ago

1. Attorney-client privilege. I'm guessing most law firms use third party email servers, anti-virus, anti-spam and archive/audit systems which this would also apply to. It would also apply if you're using Raportive, Xobni or the like (or integrated time-tracking, billing, crm, etc.).

I can't speak for all law firms, but mine has been resistant to using any such third party services. I know some firms have relaxed their policies and there are plenty of lawyers who use Gmail, but the overall law here isn't settled and can vary from state to state.

hawleyal• 13 years ago

A third party email server does not change this. The user's email server is not used. That's the point.

If a client sends an attorney an email from their Iphone, it will go to LinkedIn, instead of the client's own email server.

If an attorney sends a client an email from their Iphone, it will go to LinkedIn, instead of the attorney's own email server.

S4M• 13 years ago

Just for point 7, it might be completely legitimate for an HR or a recruiter to use linkedin as part of his/her work.

a2kadet• 13 years ago

In number 7, what do you mean by bottom up approach?

buro92• 13 years ago

One of the other subtle things they do with metadata is their fascination with IP addresses.

Intro will enable LinkedIn to have the IP address of all of your staff using it, and thus (from corp Wifi, home locations of staff, popular places your staff go) they will know which IP addresses relate to your staff members (or you individually if you are the only person on a given IP).

This means that even without logging onto LinkedIn, if you view a page on their site they can then create that "so and so viewed your profile", which is what they're selling to other users as the upgrade package to LinkedIn.

Worse than that, as a company you can pay to have LinkedIn data available when you process your log files, and from that you know which companies viewed your site. And that isn't based on vague ideas of which IPs belong to a company according to public registrar info, this is quality data as the people who visited from an IP told LinkedIn who they were.

Think of that when you're doing competitor analysis, or involved in any legal case and researching the web site of the other party.

And VPNs won't help you here, as you'd still be strongly identified on your device and leaking your IP address all the time.

There are so many reasons why this LinkedIn feature needs to die a very visible and public death, and very few about why it should survive. It's a neat hack for sure, but then so were most pop-up and pop-under adverts and the neatness of overcoming the "impossible" is no reason this should survive.

ig19• 13 years ago

fyi most of the major marketing automation platforms already let you do this. They're based upon a peer-to-peer exchange of lead information (i.e you identify yourself to one site and they'll sell that information to other sites in exchange for identifying information about other users), hence it's already far more accurate than public registrar information.

buro92• 13 years ago

Hey Imran (chatted to you in IRC a few times),

I do realise that lead information is sold, and I've had enough offers to sell my own users (which I've declined) to realise just how prevalent the practise is.

LinkedIn sell a fairly complete business dataset. My point is that a lot of people might imagine they could do this, but probably don't really believe that they are doing this.

Then when you add in Intro's almost constant tracking (vs occasionally accessing one of the sites that sells your data - or LinkedIn on the web) it is easy to see just how complete one would be making that dataset.

I'd say that most people don't really understand believe that this happens and how good (if that's the word) that dataset already is.

monkeyspaw2• 13 years ago

What platforms do this?

I'm pretty curious how they advertise the fact that they do something like this as well.

chaz• 13 years ago

The only people that are going to use this new feature are people who already use LinkedIn a lot. In which case, they already know your IP addresses, since you're likely using LinkedIn from work, home, and mobile anyway. So if they're mining IP addresses, I'm not sure that this is providing something new.

300bps• 13 years ago

Worse than that, as a company you can pay to have LinkedIn data available when you process your log files, and from that you know which companies viewed your site.

To give a real world example of how true this is, I have a friend that owns a service company. He subscribes to Visistat for which he embeds a small snippet of Javascript into every page in his site. He uses a product of theirs called LeadCaster which then identifies the company name and often the contact name of people that visit the site. How does it do this? Look at Visitstat's Learning Center for an explanation:

NOTE: Contact information is supplied by the contact databases of Data.com (formerly Jigsaw), NetProspex and LinkedIn. Not all information will be available for every company and listing, however, your reports will show all the data we are able to access for you.

So for a real world example that he told me about a few hours ago, a lady was on his website. She left without doing anything more than viewing a few pages. Through Visistat, he was able to get her company name and contact information from LinkedIn. He looked up the phone number for her company and called her. He then said, "I understand you're interest in ..." She replied, "How did you know I am interested in ...?"

This is spooky as shit and almost made me delete my LinkedIn profile today.

taway2012• 13 years ago

Will blocking third party cookies prevent this? Or is this a server-to-server transfer of regular (second-party?) cookies?

pjmlp2• 13 years ago

Someone told me over the weekend that some companies use your cookies to track down prices and adjust their prices based on your surfing behavior.

These friends of mine discovered it while browsing an airline website, each with his own laptop, only to discover different prices being offered. Which they found very strange, given they were seated next to each other.

After cleaning the browser history and visiting the same web site with anonymous mode on, both got the same prices being offered.

jusben1369• 13 years ago

On a side note, was your friend really that stupid? To call and say "I believe you're interested in our service" and not realize it would have this effect? That's amazing to me. A few years back we used a service called "Leadlander.com" It would tell us domain names that visited our site and what they did. We sold into large ISV/tech co's. So for example we might see someone from "Autodesk" showing up and looking at several pages over multiple days. I confess when we saw that we would email someone high level there and say "Hi, this is what we do and how we help companies. Not sure if this could be applicable to your or not but" Naturally more than once we got "You know, the funny thing is we are just starting to look at doing something like this"

mknits• 13 years ago

Thanks for your valuable information. I'm glad I deleted my Linkedin profile one month ago.

iamleppert• 13 years ago

In other news, e-mail is an insecure protocol and most people transmit in the clear and don't have their own e-mail infrastructure anyway.

It's interesting this "blog post" came from a professional security company who makes it money from scaring individuals and companies about security threats.

Is it just me, or is this firm even worse than LinkedIn?

llamataboot• 13 years ago

I desperately want to delete LinkedIn, but I am also looking for my first developer jobs in the tech field. In my former field, no one would ever ask for your LI profile. You send a resume, link to a resume, whatever. In the tech field, every single company I've interviewed with so far has looked at my linkedin profile before our interview and specifically requested it. Until the field changes, or I have a stronger status as a developer, I feel I have to be there or get overlooked for someone who is there.

damian2000• 13 years ago

If an employer is worth any salt they should be placing a higher value on your StackOverflow account, Github account and/or personal site (with resume). I don't see any value in LinkedIn - to me its still just a glorified resume site (and one without any verification - many people make stuff up).

foxylad3• 13 years ago

Turn this to your advantage. I'd be more impressed by a reasoned explanation of why you aren't on LinkedIn than any puffery you might have on your page.

anaphor2• 13 years ago

Simply tell them you don't use it because of ethical reasons, and explain why if asked. If you would like a replacement then check out http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ (requires a certain amount of SO rep or an invite, which I would be willing to give but I see no way of doing that with you).

tzury• 13 years ago

I wonder how's Rapportive doing this days. That is, whether this plug-in seats in people's GMail app and sends out data to LinkedIn or not.

After all, we are talking about the same team more or less, and surely the same company who owns Rapportive today.

If my concerns are real. One might find this is ironic that Rapportive was backed by YC and Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, and now this very company violating GMail users' privacy.

JeremyBanks• 13 years ago

Yikes. I've still been using Rapportive, but learning that it's being adapted into this monstrosity has instantly dissolved any trust I had for the product. Removing it now.

cognivore• 13 years ago

The thing that I find interesting is if LinkedIn goes ahead and does this, how many other companies will want to join the bandwagon and then we'll end up with our email being bounced around through a slew of different proxies so everyone can add their spam and ads to it.

anaphor2• 13 years ago

And with each one trying to remove the content produced by the others in some "clever" way.

gohrt• 13 years ago

Is this claim true? I thought the Feds were claiming that using any hosted email (Gmail, Hotmail, etc), is considered a 3rd party subject to subpoena.

These communications are generally legally privileged and can’t be used as evidence in court – but only if you keep the messages confidential.

coldcode• 13 years ago

Hmm if enough people complain Apple might close this feature. At least it's opt-in. As for me, I would say no.

sytelus• 13 years ago

I'm still not able to believe if I read that right. Does LinkedIn really re-routes your emails to their servers in their entirety? I looked at their announcement and video at http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/10/23/announcing-linkedin-intr.... There is NOT even a hint of disclosure that they are doing this. I can imagine 10 ways to achieve the similar user experience without re-routing entire emails. So if this is true, LinkedIn really really fundamentally screwed up with customer trust.

martinbc• 13 years ago

Seems like Linkedin have posted an update on http://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-intro-doing-...:

Update, 10/24/13

We wanted to provide additional information about how LinkedIn Intro works, so that we can address some of the questions that have been raised. There are some points that we want to reinforce in order to make sure members understand how this product works:

- You have to opt-in and install Intro before you see LinkedIn profiles in any email. - Usernames, passwords, OAuth tokens, and email contents are not permanently stored anywhere inside LinkedIn data centers. Instead, these are stored on your iPhone. - Once you install Intro, a new Mail account is created on your iPhone. Only the email in this new Intro Mail account goes via LinkedIn; other Mail accounts are not affected in any way. - All communication from the Mail app to the LinkedIn Intro servers is fully encrypted. Likewise, all communication from the LinkedIn Intro servers to your email provider (e.g. Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) is fully encrypted. - Your emails are only accessed when the Mail app is retrieving emails from your email provider. LinkedIn servers automatically look up the "From" email address, so that Intro can then be inserted into the email.

ninjazee124• 13 years ago

I just can't fathom how something so ridiculous could pass so many engineers at LinkedIn, without raising flags on how bad this is. The moment I saw the word "proxy" I cringed!

siculars2• 13 years ago

This idea is such a disaster I don't even know how it was allowed to see the light of day. The sad fact is that there are untold numbers of people who will install this monstrosity.

Serious questions though, if you are an IT shop - how do you defend against this trojan horse app?

jzwinck• 13 years ago

Maybe you can scan email coming into your corporate accounts, looking for LinkedIn SMTP servers in the headers? It may then be straightforward to find out (after the fact) if your users are using this service.

Aside: as Raymond Chen often asks, "What if two companies did this?" Can you layer this service with a hypothetical similar one from Facebook? If not, it seems like a huge first-mover advantage.

siculars2• 13 years ago

Right, first mover. I'm afraid LinkedIn has selfishly crossed a line that we will all suffer for. Other companies will no doubt try to do similarly idiotic things in the name of "convenience", "features", etc.

foxylad3• 13 years ago

Intro breaks secure mail.

If it's modifying the message, it likely breaks DKIM too. meaning your messages will be more likely to be flagged as spam.

More generally, this is the catalyst for me leaving LinkedIn. They've never generated any new business (not even a single lead), and if I'm honest the only reason I use it is more about my ego than anything useful.

foxylad3• 13 years ago

Opportunity time... are there any more scrupulous alternatives to LinkedIn?

codecrusade• 13 years ago

Shocking how something like this came out of Linkedin and Apple has not booted them from the App store yet?

hajderr• 13 years ago

The idea itself is not that compelling that I would install it even if it fulfilled all the criteria of security.

scotty79• 13 years ago

That shows that no engineer has any say in what linkedin does. I can't imagine any tech security aware individual would take such responsibility upon himself.

How did the C-people even found out such thing is possible? Some intern who just found out how mail works probably was flapping his jaw too much.

LinkedIn ‘Intro’duces Insecurity

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