Linkedin tracking

[Alicia]

Hi Everyone!

I wonder if anyone has ever experienced this,

I started a new job last week, I use linkedin and recently logged in to find people from the company in the people you may know feature.
I am a bit creeped out as I did not update my linkedin with the new company and also It is a completely different industry. This detail has not been put up anywhere online?

Apparently linked in use some kind of secret algorithm?

I did a search for my new company on linkedin a few days ago, I am hoping that this it the way they obtained information tha i am linked to the company and not some other sinister way such as through my emails or worse...

Anyone have any thoughts on this or have a similar experience with linkedin?

 

[Renaissance]

I haven't really used Linkedin much, but once a social media site has your email I think they may be able to gain access to your email contacts as well. I sometimes get 'so and so' invited you to linkedin', and I'm thinking it's 'Linkedin' doing this on 'so and so's' behalf.

 

[cassandra]

I haven't really used Linkedin much, but once a social media site has your email I think they may be able to gain access to your email contacts as well. I sometimes get 'so and so' invited you to linkedin', and I'm thinking it's 'Linkedin' doing this on 'so and so's' behalf.

How can this be legal?

 

[Rich]

I haven't really used Linkedin much, but once a social media site has your email I think they may be able to gain access to your email contacts as well. I sometimes get 'so and so' invited you to linkedin', and I'm thinking it's 'Linkedin' doing this on 'so and so's' behalf.

How can this be legal?

Normally it is the box that pops up that few read and asks whether you allow them to.

Edit: Looking into this further I found:

I regularly get questions about how in the world LinkedIn knows who you might know… people that you are not connected to but show up in the People You May Know section. I wrote to a contact at LinkedIn who gave me permission to paraphrase his response… which is this (this response was to my question from someone who saw some surprising suggestions in the box):

If you never imported your mail account contacts then LinkedIn really has no way to get them.

If you import your contacts from any system then LinkedIn can make the logic connections between YOU and your imported contacts. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

The algorithm (logic) for the People You May Know section is proprietary – it’s their “secret sauce” (or what we in IT call “black box”), and is a constant work in progress.

There is an analytics person who scours LinkedIn data looking for correlations between connections to try to figure out why they connected.

Some of the logical, easy-to-figure-out connections would come from asking questions like:

Was the person you may know a common person they both knew at their most recent job? Someone at their first job? At college? Etc.

As you would expect, LinkedIn has revised this logic/algorithm over the years. Different factors would become the most important ones based on how the network changes and their understanding of it. Their goal is to deliver those “how did they know that” moments in a way that makes sense to you (not freaks you out).

Finally, my contact made it clear that the contacts that show up in that box are not coming from some access to any of your non-LinkedIn accounts without your approval.

Perhaps when it is most eerily correct, it’s more a function of them getting their algorithm correct :) I’m pretty confident that they are not hacking into my mail system, nor are they allowed access by my mail providers.

_http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/2009/09/14/linkedin-people-you-may-know-privacy-contrversy/

 

[seek10]

I did a search for my new company on linkedin a few days ago, I am hoping that this it the way they obtained information tha i am linked to the company and not some other sinister way such as through my emails or worse...

Anyone have any thoughts on this or have a similar experience with linkedin?

Probably you might have searched on company name in linkedin. It is possible that there is a sort of algorithm based on search pattern. If I go to lot of websites at work, I get the ramada Inn ad, as I searched the hotel more than others as I stayed there multiple times. Or they can search your history ( though I am not sure of security constrains for history search )