Salon.com: LinkedIn released a new product today called Intro. They call it “doing the impossible”, but some might call it “hijacking email”. Why do we say this? Consider the following:
Intro reconfigures your iOS device (e.g. iPhone, iPad) so that all of your emails go through LinkedIn’s servers. You read that right. Once you install the Intro app, all of your emails, both sent and received, are transmitted via LinkedIn’s servers. LinkedIn is forcing all your IMAP and SMTP data through their own servers and then analyzing and scraping your emails for data pertaining to…whatever they feel like.
7 comments:
I'm confused, this really does not seem to offer anything other then easy connection to people on LinkedIn. But in return they want complete access to your email. This kind of seems like a suicide. The negative press that is going to accompany this is going to far surpass any money they will potentially make off of this. I'm also curious how quickly security corporations and think-tanks are going to react to this. My mother worked for the Rand Corporation for awhile and the emails she sent had to be encrypted and sent only through their secure servers. How do they ensure that none of their employees are using this app. This is certainly a good day for Wikileaks.
This development is terrifying in our day and age. The thing that's even more scary? People will download this app thinking how great it is that it will connect them to more people in cyber space, without ever thinking about the consequences. I was considering their point about the NSA at the very beginning of the article. If all of your email is going through one public server, the government's access to your private information is even easier than it is now! It is never a good idea to give anyone access to information that you can't control. Linked In says it won't use your private data in an inappropriate manner? Who is sitting there deciding what is private, and what an appropriate manner is? In order to decide what is private, the server must first view all of your information, including your private information. This puts your information into another place on the internet, making you that much more of a target. Big Brother is watching, and this app just made their lives ten times easier.
I'm sorry, but this is, as Jess says, TERRIFYING! Why is this even being implemented? What data is LinkedIn trying to gather, and how is there not a better way to do it? This simple reads as a scam, and makes me want to delete my LinkedIn account this instant for fear of being sucked in. A lot of us keep separate personal and professional emails for a perfectly good reason. As the article mentions, many people have to send confidential info using their work email addresses, and this risks violating company policies and leaking sensitive information. I smell a rat, and I wonder what it will mean for the future of LinkedIn. Probably not good things...
I agree with Isaac in that I can't believe that LinkedIn would think they could get away with this. I can't wait to see the lawsuits that will ensue. The whole idea that this sort of privacy violation could be carried forth by a relatively well-known company, and one that most people would have no reason not to trust, is very scary. If this is possible, then it's not possible for anything in our lives to be kept private in the modern age. I hope that no one who downloads the Intro app without knowing this information gets in trouble for violating their employer's policies. How are people supposed to know that this is happening? I hope that articles like this are getting out to employers, so that employers can take the responsibility of warning their employees about the dangers of installing the Intro app. (P.S. What happens when you uninstall the app? Does it mess with your email records and your phone settings permanently?)
I had read an article similar to this previously, and I am still as incredulous of this new service as I was when I first heard about it. I can't believe people at LinkedIn think this was a good idea, and even more so can't believe that consumers would even consider installing this "service" for a moment. People are essentially voluntarily signing up to be spied upon. Sure, LinkedIn says they won't use your private data inappropriately, but the simple fact that people are handing over their private data to be stored in a server somewhere still compromises the security of that data. This is worse than simply giving a company a list of data, as by installing the app a consumer gives permission to be continuously spied upon
I really am not seeing any redeeming qualities to this app. It is a violation of your associates' and your own privacy and it could get you fired.The risk it presents to people's private information is ridiculously high and not worth being able to send messages easily to your LinkedIn friends. If anything this sound like an excuse to have access to people's private information, and in that case we should be asking LinkedIn more questions about their intentions.
It's interesting how something that seems so trivial like having your emails go through LinkedIn servers can cause such a problem.
Some of the arguments that the article made such as Attorney-client privilege does seem like a problem. However, if the NSA wants to hack your email, they don't need LinkedIn to help them.
However, I do think that this is a good example of how little technological advances can have side effects that a normal user might not be aware of. If I would have seen the new app "Intro" I might think that it's cool and not understand what it does.
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