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LinkedIn Emails Exposed Via Browser Add On

posted by NCommander on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-is-this-possible? dept.

lhsi writes:

The BBC is reporting that the email addresses of LinkedIn users can be exposed via a web browser add on. A LinkedIn spokesman told the BBC "We are doing everything we can to shut Sell Hack down. On 31 March LinkedIn's legal team delivered Sell Hack a cease-and-desist letter as a result of several violations"

NCommander adds: Sell Hack is a plugin for Chrome that allows you to retrieve emails from LinkedIn itself. The article goes on to say that Sell Hack is complying with the cease and desist, but actual details remain somewhat light. If anyone is familiar with the inner works of this plugin, I'll amend this article to include the details.

This isn't LinkedIn's first battle with third party services

 
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  • (Score: 1) by RaffArundel on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:12PM

    by RaffArundel (3108) on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:12PM (#25505) Homepage

    Correct, it doesn't even "hack" LinkedIn to get the address - it guesses it and then tries to confirm it with "publically accessible data", whatever that may be. It looks like a sales/lead generation tool, with the express purpose of spamming.

    I wonder if everyone would be so up in arms if they didn't use "Hack In" as the button name, or have a better plug-in name than "Sell Hack".