INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A win for privacy on LinkedIn could be a big loss for businesses, recruiters and anyone else expecting to be able to export the email
addresses of their connections
LinkedIn just quietly introduced a new privacy setting that defaults to blocking other users from exporting your email address
That could prevent some spam, and protect users who didn&t realize anyone who they&re connected tocould download their email address into a
But the launch of this new setting without warning or even a formal announcement could piss off users who&d invested tons of time into the
professional networking site in hopes of contacting their connections outside of it.
TechCrunch was tipped off by a reader that emails
were no longer coming through as part of LinkedIn Archive tool for exporting your data
Now LinkedIn confirms to TechCrunch that &This is a new setting that gives our members even more control of their email address on LinkedIn
If you take a look at the setting titled ‘Who can download your email&, you&ll see we&ve added a more detailed setting that defaults to
the strongest privacy option
Members can choose to change that setting based on their preference
This gives our members control over who can download their email address via a data export.&
That new option can be found under Settings
Privacy -> Privacy -> Who Can See My Email Address This &Allow your connections to download your email [address of user]in their data
export& toggle defaults to &No.& Most users don&t know it exists because LinkedIn didn&t announce it; there merely been a folded up section
added to the Help centeron email visibility, and few might voluntarily change it to &Yes& as there no explanation of why you&d want to
That means nearly no one email addresses will appear in LinkedIn Archive exports any more
Your connections will still be able to see your email address if they navigate to your profile, but they can&t grab those from their whole
graph.
Facebook shouldn&t block you from finding friends on competitors
Facebook came to the same conclusion about restricting email
exportsback when it was in a data portability fight with Google in 2010
Facebook had been encouraging users to import their Gmail contacts, but refused to let users export their Friends& email addresses
It argued that users own their own email addresses, but not those of their Friends, so they couldn&t be downloaded — though that stance
conveniently prevented any other app from bootstrapping a competing social graph by importing your Facebook friend list in any usable way
I&ve argued that Facebook needs to make friend lists interoperable to give users choice about what apps they use, both because it the right
thing to do but also because it could deter regulation.
On a social network like Facebook, barring email exports makes more sense
But on LinkedIn professional network, where people are purposefully connecting with those they don&t know, and where exporting has always
been allowed, making the change silently seems surreptitious
Perhaps LinkedIn didn&t want to bring attention to the fact it was allowing your email address to be slurped up by anyone you&re connected
with, given the current media climate of intense scrutiny regarding privacy in social tech
But trying to hide a change that massively impactful to businesses that rely on LinkedIn could erode the trust of its core users.
