The original version of the LinkedIn mobile app uploaded your personal contacts stored on your smart phone and SIM to their server (to also "invite" them), without requesting user permission.
replyAfter that, I never installed it again (but too late), and I bought a second (non-smart) phone.
When I created an account on LinkedIn, a long time ago, I used the web. When it asked if I wanted to invite other people from my list of contacts, I clicked yes. I thought it would let me manually enter some contacts, or at worst, give me a list to choose from, with some kind of permissions prompt. Somehow, it accessed my entire Gmail contact list, and invited them all. My goodness, that was terrifying (I didn't even know it was possible) and embarrassing. Companies are not to be trusted, ever. Especially now, as they've proven for decades they have zero moral compass, and no qualms about abusing people for profit.
replyWhatsApp infamously did just that.
replyIt vacuumed the contacts and spammed them with "Join me on WhatsApp". One of the reasons for their initial exponential growth.
Venmo did this too
replyAlmost everything coming out of Silicon Valley has an unethical past(present?) if you look at it a bit more closely.
replyI don't know how they're still in business after that. They also had a massive data breach at one point.
replyBecause super-majority doesn't really care if the product does what it's intended to in the end.
replyI remember boycotting them for many years after that, yes.
replyNow lots of contact forms (not even necessarily job related!) are treating it as a required field. Pretty distasteful situation.
Do you have a reference with more information on that?
replyOn HN itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277202
replyConfirmed 5 years later in media; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-20/linkedin-...
They used a legit google oauth but with broad rights. They did pull the contact and repeatedly spam them as personal emails. There were lawsuits.
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