MOO has a limited offer where you can order 50 business cards for free. The only catch is that you have to give them access to the details of your LinkedIn connections. The value of this offer is approximately 20 euro.
If your not familiar with MOO: they have some really nice products - I have ordered mini cards before - and the cool things is that each card can have a different image. So you can actually get 50 unique cards!
Grab it while it lasts.
18 Comments
Giving a service like Moo
Submitted by Nick Hofstede on
Giving a service like Moo your LinkedIn username and password is bad enough*, but trading the email addresses and other personal information that the people in your network chose to share with someone they trusted - you** - with a service like Moo, thereby violating the privacy of everyone in your network is criminal***, not to mention cheap. I guess it's too late to disconnect you from my network?
* I know you use a different password for every website out there, but how many people out there don't use the same password for their email account as well as their LinkedIn account?
** (and LinkedIn)
*** Giving out personal information to Moo that was given to you for the purpose of "getting back in touch" or "expertise requests" might very well be in violation of privacy laws, and thus truly criminal.
Some responses: Not only am
Submitted by litrik on
Some responses:
Commendable, but how many
Submitted by Nick Hofstede on
Free business cards. Bah. Hardly.
* in a perfect world, all they would need is the OpenId accounts of everyone you know, but we're not there yet.
The remark about my 200+
Submitted by litrik on
The remark about my 200+ connections is valid. People with far less connections will get the same number of business cards. I might have negotiated a better deal ;)
And yes I would have taken the offer if they had reworded it differently.
BTW, it might sound weird but I put more trust in MOO than in the 1.5 million connections 3 degrees away from me which are also able to access your profile data in certain ways.
PS: It is probably worth noting that I already unauthorized the MOO application in the Authorized Applications section LinkedIn's Account & Settings pages. Failure to do so gives MOO access to your network details indefinitely.
Don't worry, given that an
Submitted by Nick Hofstede on
Don't worry, given that an email address sells for about 0,2 dollar cents, you still made a good deal at 9,3 euro cents per address.
I'm sad to hear that protecting the privacy of your connections isn't one of your principles, norio.
I must admit that there are cases where I divulge information about myself to get a better deal (the customer cards at your local supermarket or DIY shop are good examples), but I like to make that decision myself, and I wouldn't give out other people's information for my own gain.
The 1.5 million connections 3 degrees away from you don't have access to the email addresses of all your connections. They don't even have access to your list of connections. Your first order contacts do, but even they don't get access to your connections' email addresses.
It is indeed worth noting that they use the LinkedIn API and don't ask for your username and password themselves, thereby just giving them access to a session you can revoke, unlike many of the other examples you listed which simply use the login you provided. Even so, they probably gathered all information they wanted the minute you gave them access, and there is no way of ever getting that back.
While this alleviates my concern about suggesting people to give yet another site their password, it's still not treating the privacy of your connections with the respect it deserves.
Clever people create a
Submitted by Anonymous on
Clever people create a linkedin account with a disposable email address before taking this offer. :-)
... which is also unethical,
Submitted by Nick Hofstede on
... which is also unethical, but at least it doesn't inconvenience me ...
Creating an extra LinkedIn
Submitted by litrik on
Creating an extra LinkedIn account just for the MOO offer violates the LinkedIn user agreement: "Users may not have more than one active account."
I think I'll study the
Submitted by litrik on
I think I'll study the website of the privacy commission a little bit further because what I've read so far confuses me thoroughly.
> I'll give you one of the
Submitted by Bertje on
> I'll give you one of the 50 business cards so we can "stay in touch" and you'll be able to "request expertise". ;)
In that case, I'll be passing by some time to collect the business card you paid with my personal information. I'll also happily set up a free business card delivery service for my 24 collegues that are in your connections list. So please reserve 25 of those 50 cards for ID. ;)
No, that does not count. The
Submitted by litrik on
No, that does not count. The offer to Nick is non-transferable (and non-refundable). Nick deserves a card (I'll even sign it ;) because he is sincerely worried about his privacy. He wrote a couple of comments with strong arguments. Simply saying "me too" does not count. This is not a class action ;)
I am concerned about my
Submitted by Bertje on
I am concerned about my privacy; that's why I'm always very careful about divulging my personal information to all kinds of sites and companies (both online and offline). You will not find any online information about me that I have not willingly provided while knowing what it could and would be used for. You will also not find any photos of me that I not fully endorse (at the moment I have only two online photos that I know of and I bet you'll have it difficult to find any others).
Just because I agree with Nick doesn't mean I have to reword everything he said. I will reword this though: you abused information given to you by people who put their confidence in you, for personal gain. In the end, the worst part of the whole story is the fact that apparently, you sold your network's personal information even after you had been warned that what you were about to do was illegal. Yes indeed, what you did was illegal in Belgium: privacy laws are not applicable if information handling is for personal use; you, however, own a company, which voids this particular clause.
I only recently heard about TAS3 (not through Nick, in case you're wondering). Unfortunately, it is still in development and after that still needs more than a year of testing and evaluating, but now I whish it was already implemented into LinkedIn.
"privacy laws are not
Submitted by litrik on
"privacy laws are not applicable if information handling is for personal use; you, however, own a company, which voids this particular clause."
Are you saying that you are allowed to take the MOO-LinkedIn offer because you do not own a company, while I'm not because I own a company?!? That doesn' t make any sense because the net result is the same: information gets transferred from LinkedIn to MOO.
This would also mean I'm not allowed to keep my address book online in Gmail but you would. I would have to ask your permission to store your name, email, telephone and any additional info in the "Notes" field ?!?
Again, as I've said in an earlier comment, the site of the privacy commission contains a lot of statements that confuse me and raise more questions than they answer. Worthy of a separate blog post.
I would argue that selling
Submitted by Nick Hofstede on
I would argue that selling someone else's personal information isn't "personal use" anymore even if it is for "personal gain". Adding someone's email address to your contact list in Google mail still arguably is "personal use" but you could also argue that it still involves divulging the information and should therefore also be covered by the general privacy rules. A further difference between the two cases is that when I give you my email address for the purpose of "staying in touch", I might reasonably expect you to do the latter, but not the former.
So yes, strictly interpreted, simply uploading an email address to your contact list in gmail for your own benefit requires you to register with the commission and get consent of the party involved.
But certainly yes, even by the loosest standard imaginable, selling someone else's email address requires you to register and get the consent of the party involved.
I really don't understand you don't see the difference between the two cases while the responses I got from my colleagues over lunch were unanimous. You should not do this without consent of the parties involved. And personally, I think you should not even need a law to restrain you from doing it.
I do see the difference
Submitted by litrik on
I do see the difference between the two cases. I'm just trying to understand where the line (of the law) is.
The more I read about the privacy laws the more problems I see.
I brought up the Gmail scenario because Bertje made a difference between owning a company or not. Which IMHO is totally bogus because the privacy commission's definition of "verwerker" includes "natuurlijke persoon".
Anyway, this discussion is too big for this small blog. I have asked a question at LinkedIn Anwsers and I have also sent them an email. Let's see what responses I get there.
I find the location of your
Submitted by Nick Hofstede on
I find the location of your ethical line at least as interesting. I'm still hoping to move it a bit.
I agree that the distinction Bertje made isn't relevant.
I think the offer is legal. Taking it without registering with the privacy commission* and without the consent of all parties involved is the problematic part.
* You might get away without registering if you can show that the processing of the data wasn't (even partially) automated. Which might be a challenge given that a computer is involved.
Another interesting point: according to Moo's privacy policy they aren't allowed to collect the data you provided. Somehow I think they are violating that policy.
Keep us posted.
I haven't received any
Submitted by litrik on
I haven't received any response yet from LinkedIn but I also sent an email to MOO. I asked which LinkedIn information they were using. They answered:
This means they only use my name, my title and the URL of my public LinkedIn profile page.
The LinkedIN API does allow access to a lot more information than what MOO is using so I'm still curious about LinkedIn's response.
I'll keep you all posted.
Good news, even if I'm still
Submitted by Nick Hofstede on
Good news, even if I'm still not clear about how much I trust them. They could've scraped that information from your public profile, but maybe the API was more convenient. For now they get the benefit of doubt.
It would be a good idea for Linked In to make the information that can be accessed through the API more configurable. They could divide the information in different classes like "My public profile", "My private profile" and "My connections" and indicate to what information an application has access. They might even allow users to set the access permissions for every information item for every application.
Giving acces to your connections should only rarely be useful (or indeed legal). The only usecase I can come up with is a desktop application or gadget that presents an alternate, perhaps more user friendly, view on your LinkedIn account or network updates.
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