Warning: Is LinkedIn using spyware to harvest private email contacts?

LinkedIn Email Security: It all began when LinkedIn sent an email asking if I knew a certain individual.

I was shocked, because there was no public connection between us.

Our “private” communications were limited to a half-dozen recent emails about my latest book project.

He had a LinkedIn account/profile, but hadn’t updated it for over a year.

When I told him about the LinkedIn email, ” he promptly deleted his account.

We concluded that LinkedIn might be using spyware to: 1) harvest my email contacts and/or 2) scanned my recent emails when I clicked a link in one of their emails.

And then it happened again.

LinkedIn sent me an email asking if I knew the tech support person at a company that hosts one of my websites.

I wrote and asked him how LinkedIn could possibly know about our recent “private” communications. Again, there is no public connection whatsoever.

He wrote back with a bombshell: “A few days ago I went on the LinkedIn webpage to start an account. The last step shows a list of people you may know based on the e-mail address that you have entered — which means that it must go through the e-mail history in order to see who else from those email addresses matches a LinkedIn account. I actually decided not to join Linkedin because of the fact that I didn’t like it was already making suggestions for me before I even signed up for an account.”

How could LinkedIn could suggest his name to me – and my name to him – us unless they scanned my email history and preserved the information in a database, or alternatively, could somehow scan his email contacts without even sending him an email.

I don’t have answers, only questions.  If you know more, please share it with our readers.

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