I used to have a LinkedIn account, a long time ago. To register I created an email address that was unique to LinkedIn, and pretty much unguessable ... certainly not amenable to a dictionary attack.

I ended up deciding that I was getting no value from the account, and I heard unpleasant things about the company, so I deleted the account.

Within hours I started to get spam to that unique email address.

It would be interesting to run a semi-controlled experiment to test whether this was a fluke, or if they leaked, sold, or otherwise lost control of my data. But absolutely I will not trust them with anything I want to keep private.

I do not trust LinkedIn to keep my data secure ... I believe they sold it.

A good reminder of how things actually work, but the article could use some more balancing…

> Let that sink in. You scanned your European passport for a European professional network, and your data went exclusively to North American companies. Not a single EU-based subprocessor in the chain.

LinkedIn is an American product. The EU has had 20 years to create an equally successful and popular product, which it failed to do. American companies don’t owe your European nationalist ambitions a dime. Use their products at your own discretion.

Of course an American company is subject to American law. And of course an American company will prioritise other local, similar jurisdiction companies. And often times there’s no European option that competes on quality, price, etc to begin with. In other words I don’t see why any of this is somehow uniquely wrong to the OP.

> Here’s what the CLOUD Act does in plain language: it allows US law enforcement to force any US-based company to hand over data, even if that data is stored on a server outside the United States.

European law enforcement agencies have the same powers, which they easily exercise.

I really appreciate this write-up.

Was forced to verify to get access to a new account. Like, an interstitial page that forced verification before even basic access.

Brief context for that: was being granted a salesnav licence, but to my work address with no account attached to it. Plus I had an existing salesnav trial underway on main account and didn't want to give access to that work.

So I reluctantly verified with my passport (!) and got access. Then looked at all the privacy settings to try to access what I'd given, but the full export was only sign up date and one other row in a csv. I switched off all the dark pattern ad settings that were default on, then tried to recall the name of the company. Lack of time meant I haven't been able to follow up. I was deeply uncomfortable with the whole process.

So now I've requested my info and deletion via the details in the post, from the work address.

One other concern is if my verified is ever forced to be my main, I'll be screwed for contacts and years of connections. So I'll try to shut it down soon when I'm sure we're done at work. But tbh I don't think the issues will end there either.

Why do these services have to suck so much. Why does money confer such power instead of goodwill, integrity and trust/trustless systems. Things have to change. Or, just stay off the grid. But that shouldn't have to be the choice. Where are the decentralised services. I'm increasingly serious about this.

On EU data sovereignty:

The OP is right. For that reason we started migrating all of our cloud-based services out of USA into EU data centers with EU companies behind them. We are basically 80% there. The last 20% remaining are not the difficult ones - they are just not really that important to care that much at this point but the long terms intention is a 100% disconnect.

On IDV security:

When you send your document to an IDV company (be that in USA or elsewhere) they do not have the automatic right to train on your data without explicit consent. They have been a few pretty big class action lawsuits in the past around this but I also believe that the legal frameworks are simply not strong enough to deter abuse or negligence.

That being said, everyone reading this must realise that with large datasets it is practically very likely to miss-label data and it is hard to prove that this is not happening at scale. At the end of the day it will be a query running against a database and with huge volumes it might catch more than it should. Once the data is selected for training and trained on, it is impossible to undo the damage. You can delete the training artefact after the fact of course but the weights of the models are already re-balanced with the said data unless you train from scratch which nobody does.

I think everyone should assume that their data, be that source code, biometrics, or whatever, is already used for training without consent and we don't have the legal frameworks to protect you against such actions - in fact we have the opposite. The only control you have is not to participate.

Ha. I was reading this and thought "euhhhh, I did not give all of that to verify my account". So I went to LinkedIn to check if I have the shield. I then saw

- that I just have "work email verified" and that there is a Persona thing I was not even aware of

- a post by Brian Krebs at the top of my feed, exactly on that topic: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bkrebs_if-you-are-thinking-ab...

From the article:

> Let that sink in. You scanned your European passport for a European professional network, and your data went exclusively to North American companies. Not a single EU-based subprocessor in the chain.

Not sure LinkedIn is a European professional network.

Great article, thank you.

Hiding all this very important info (which literally affects the users life) behind an insignificant boring click! Even the most paranoid user will give up in certain use cases, (like with covid 19 which even though didn´t agree, you needed to travel, work making it compulsory). Every company that uses deciving techniques like this should be banned in Europe.

This is the kind of activism in privacy appreciate that we need. I knew I did not want to verify but I did verify on Linkedin recently. The fact that the author also gave an action list if you are concerned about your privacy is just commendable.

I hate LinkedIn but need it for a few things, mostly accessing certain clients and projects as a freelancer. Last October my ISP (Vodafone UK) assigned me a datacenter-classified IPv6 address with 80+ abuse reports on reputation databases, for bots, DDoS, crawlers. Before I realized this I started getting locked out, suspended, restricted from just about every web service I use, having to solve captchas for simple Google searches, etc.

I resolved everything except LinkedIn. They required Persona verification to restore access, but I'd already recently verified with Persona, so clicking the re-verification links just returned a Catch-22 "you've already verified with us." LinkedIn support is unreachable unless you're signed into an account. I tried direct emails, webforms, DMs to LinkedIn Help on Twitter, all completely ignored.

Eventually some cooldown timer must have expired, because Persona finally let me re-verify last week. Upon regaining access, I was encouraged me to verify with Persona AGAIN, this time for the verified badge.

I now have a taste of what "digital underclass" means, and look forward to the day when no part of my income depends on horrible platforms that make me desperate for the opportunity to give away my personal data!

I wonder what mongo and snowflake are doing with that data. The table is a little vague.

I was under the impression they just make database products. Do they have a side hustle involving collecting this type of data?

> If you’ve already verified — like me — here’s what I’d recommend

Did you actually follow through with 1-4 and if so what was the outcome? how long did it take?

> My NFC chip data — the digital info stored on the chip inside my passport

Do we know how they get that? Because my fingerprints are also in there, so...

How does this work for the myriad banks I've had to prove my identity to in the same way? I'll be attempting steps 1-4 and see what Persona comes back with.

Since some job offers require a linked in link, I maintain an empty page explaining why maintaining a LI account is a privacy and security hole. It turns out it works.

LinkedIn locked me out of my account, and wants me to verify via this same Persona company. I didn't read the terms but there's no way I'm giving Microsoft or its minions my govt id.

What this user missed is the affidavit option: you can get a piece of paper attested by a local authority and upload that instead, if you really really need a LinkedIn verified account.

Microsoft can go jump.

You can verify yourself using company email address - maybe I am being naive to think that it’s much safer, but it’s way better than handing over your ID data.

I never understand why people supply too much info about themselves for small gains.

People at LinkedIn wants you to believe that your career is safe if you play by their games, but ironically they are one of the main reasons why companies nowadays are comfortable with hiring and firing fast.

Just wait when next time they ask for your member length and girth or flaps size.

This process will be done in a way that you won’t even have to do it in 3min, it will be part of you phone wallet, and whenever you sign up you will be required to verify it there, essentially, all big tech will be having a copy of your biometric, and consequently, all three letter agencies too. Welcome to the tyranny of big tech!

You still have a linkedin? Isn't that just all ai slop?

What a sad story. I feel sorry for this person. But it was very naive to put that data up in the first place. I recently tried to open a FB acct so I could connect with local community but within 2 days I was accused of being a bot and asked to start a video interview with a verification bot. That didn't happen, local community can do without me ;)