Just go to the “people you may know” page and you’ll see dozens of shadow profiles of people who clearly don’t have LinkedIn accounts. Mine shows relatives who I know don’t have accounts — but whose contact info was scraped by LinkedIn during my dumber years when I opted into their “help us connect you by linking your account” bullshit.
Is there a way to request they remove this data? I sure don’t know how.
I brought this up to my mother who has been retired now for about 15 years but somehow still has a linkedin account. She never created one but somehow still had a profile, it freaked me out.
My long dead grandpa has been a recommended connection for many years now. He was a home builder and never signed up for an account. I have no idea how they got his info and connected it to me. Creeps me out...
Some shared connection (a family member, maybe?) probably let LinkedIn scan their mailbox without fully understanding the repercussions.
If that person had a persistent inbox like gmail, and ever been in email contact with the both of you, it probably inferred a connection that way. Or maybe it saw an incoming email where both of you were in the recipient or CC list.
It’s really creepy what they do, and it enables them to learn all kinds of information about somebody. That person doesn’t even need to have ever visited LinkedIn; it can be provided entirely by other people.
Is there a way to request they remove this data? I sure don’t know how.