LinkedIn Spam

[jducoeur]

[Please pardon a brief rant.]

Okay, I am beginning to lose patience with LinkedIn. My network there has leveled out for the time being, which is fine -- I haven't been pursuing it very aggressively lately, and I'm pretty picky there. (Whereas I'll accept Facebook invites from essentially anybody I know, even tangentially, my bar for LinkedIn is that I have to know somebody well enough to be at least somewhat comfortable recommending them for a job.)

And the thing is, I'm continuing to get invitations -- more often than not from strangers. And I don't just mean "this person is at one remove from me in the network" -- today's example is from "Icey Dfs", who is "Sales at Dongguan Dingfeng Silicone Products Co., Ltd", in, no shit, Guangdong, China.

Let's cut the claims that this is about networking: this is spam, plain and simple. And at this point, that spam is making up fully half of the invites I'm getting from LinkedIn -- not a huge number, but at this point I expect large social networks to be good at spam control. Worse, LinkedIn has *no option* for reporting invitations as spam! Hell, the email invite doesn't even give me the option of ignoring the damned thing, and I know that, by tossing it in the trash, I'm going to get another copy next week, reminding me of the invitation I pointedly don't want.

Yes, it is probably true that changing my profile title to CEO/Architect didn't help this, but I don't much care -- if the spammers are focusing on people with managerial titles, that means they are hitting LinkedIn's prime audience the worst. LinkedIn needs to bring this crap under control, or I may conclude that it's not the trouble maintaining an account...

Comments

[etherial.livejournal.com]

At this point, 100% of my LinkedIn invites are spam.

[jtdiii.livejournal.com]

You could always start to write recommendations...

"This is a company I will gladly short as it rides into the glorious dustbin of oblivion."

"I eagerly look forward to working with XYZ again if for no other reason to hear the invectives he uses on the police officers who next haul him off."

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

I have one -who keeps trying. An exercise guru, not connected to anyone I know.

What I get a lot of, more unhappily, is endless requests to 'just speak with me for a couple of minutes about your testing needs'. (Yeah, maybe I should remove the word "manager".)

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

This may be the biggest reason I *won't* use LinkedIn. They have no intention of controlling their spam problem. Heck, they refuse to recognize that it *is* spam. If I had an account, I might be marginally more understanding ("existing business relationship" and all). But I don't, and not only do I get these invitations, they keep hounding me ("did you forget?"). Not only is there no real way to opt out, I shouldn't have to opt out in the first place. Effectively I have, however: I block them at the server.

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

Huh. I get these weird invites from LinkedIn, and in the first email, the choices are "Accept" or "Profile." But if I just delete that invite, then the next one says, "XYZ invited you to connect 4 days ago. How would you like to respond?" "Accept" "Ignore"

If I wait for that second email, I can ignore the idiots - I mean technical recruiters.

[jducoeur]

Just so -- but the fact that I have to wait for the second copy before I can ignore it burns my butt. And I don't even mind the recruiters so much (those are LinkedIn's core constituency, and in this business one tries to stay friendly with them); it's the out-and-out spammers that are turning me completely off the system...