I was getting very tired of some rather obtuse discussions in the LinkedIn groups and in particular WordPress.
I decided to change my primary address in LinkedIn so this nonsense would end up in my secondary email account (non-time critical items and newsletters).
Still getting endless groups updates on my main email address.
So I decide to remove my main address altogether from LinkedIn.
Still getting endless emails from LinkedIn.
I submit a support ticket.
Member Comment: Alec Kinnear
06/20/2011 05:41Hi,
I’ve removed name@domain.com from my account as I couldn’t stand the incessant emails from groups anymore.
I’m still getting notifications to this address despite name@domain.com being my primary address now.
Please help stop the emails to name@domain.com
Making the web work for you, Alec
A nice enough support person by the name of Darci offers a polite but vague reply:
LinkedIn Response
06/20/2011 14:53Hi Alec,
Thank you for contacting us.
I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.
Please know that we are fully aware of this issue and have a team of dedicated, highly qualified individuals who are working diligently to resolve this.
I appreciate your patience and support as we attempt to resolve this matter.
Regards,
Darci
LinkedIn Customer Service
When I start to hear about dedicated, highly qualified individuals, I start to get nervous. It makes me think about McDonalds dedicated restaurant crews. So I ask Darcie for a bit more precision:
Member Comment: Alec Kinnear
06/21/2011 08:40Hello Darci,
Thanks for your email.
When do you expect this issue to be resolved?
I do not have name@domain.com hooked up to LinkedIn in any way now, so effectively you are spamming me.
Making the web work for you, Alec
Apparently vague promises are fine but resolution is not.
LinkedIn Response
06/21/2011 10:23Hi Alec,
I’m sorry but I do not have a time frame that I can give out. We are working on the issue, and will contact you as soon as we know anything further. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Regards,
Darci
LinkedIn Customer Service
No time frame is really not okay. LinkedIn has hijacked my primary email address and won’t let go:
Member Comment: Alec Kinnear
06/21/2011 11:33Hi Darci!
No time frame is not acceptable.
Please remove name@domain.com from your servers completely. I do not want any LinkedIn messages to that address at all.
Thanks.
Making the web work for you, Alec
The situation is worse than I thought. LinkedIn will really spam me until the ISP’s block their pipes:
On 21 Jun 2011, at 17:23, LinkedIn Customer Support wrote:
Subject: Still receiving LinkedIn emails on name@domain.com after removing it from accountHi Alec,
I’m sorry but we have a bug in our system at this time that is not releasing email addresses that were entered into it at one time and now removed. We have a team working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. I’m sorry for the inconvenience this is causing, but there is nothing further I can do at this time. We will contact you as soon as the issue has been resolved.
Regards,
Darci
LinkedIn Customer Service
I’m not happy about sitting around, waiting for LinkedIn to stop spamming me.
Moral of the story
I’m very sorry to have given LinkedIn a primary address in the first place. I recommend you don’t.
Where LinkedIn get marks is for having a customer service department who respond to emails at all. That’s a big improvement over Google or Facebook.
Now I really know why I’m not on Facebook. I’m sure it’s far worse over there if you want to stop the deluge.
Practical Advice Before You Close Your Account
Several readers have written to complain that closing your account doesn’t stop the LinkedIn Spam:
I am so upset I put my primary email address on Linkedin (which I didn’t do on Facebook). I joined both of these social websites to keep in touch with actual groups I am an active member of but LI quickly wore out my welcome mat. I’ve tried to remove my welcome mat but LI ignores my closed account still to this day. Hopefully anyone reading this is smarter than I was and takes these warnings to heart and uses a throwaway email account to subscribe if at all. WARNING: You will not be able to unsubscribe no matter what their website states!!!!!
Here’s what you must do first, before you close your account.
Be sure to change your email address to one which you can verify and then turn off. Give it a week or two for the new email address to take before cancelliing your account.
Be sure to unsubscribe to email updates from every group you’ve ever joined. While I know unsubscribing to email updates works, I’m not sure that unsubscribing to an active group before unsubscribing to email updates actually works.
Further Practical Advice on how to get LinkedIn Shut Down as Spammers
There’s a service called SpamCop.net. Sign up and report your LinkedIn messages there. If you use Google, Hotmail, MSN, AOL or Yahoo there are huge spam buttons there.
Report every LinkedIn email. While LinkedIn has some corporate protection (as one of the big boys club), if even half the people getting their unwanted emails complain about it, LinkedIn emails will be reclassified as spam and forced to change their policies.
LinkedIn Management and Reid Hoffman
It’s a pity LinkedIn management are such wankers. The service would be valuable if they had any respect for users/clients. I don’t know if Reid Hoffman has any idea about how much hatred his lazy/deliberate spamming policies would generate on the net. Hoffman was a founding director at Paypal (perhaps the web’s most hated company, although Paypal appear to be trying to clean up their act somewhat now, before regulators do it for them), so perhaps no surprise Hoffman has no respect for users.
Hoffman is also responsible for setting up the first round of angel investment in Facebook. Again no surprise about the lack of respect for users. Hoffman again was a first round investor and director at Zynga, well known for spamming Facebook and other users and for scam ads.
Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn – Heart of Darkness: Photo by Robert Scoble
Generally Hoffman is a fat rude prick with no respect for users. He has a consistent background of involvement with the net’s worst spammers. This is the man who has rough ridden users to $3 billion net worth. Report his spam mercilessly and shut him down.
Who says crime doesn’t pay? Unfortunately, crime often leaves its traces on your body and your face.
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
A bug that doesn’t allow them to delete emails? Is it an actual insect that bites them if they try to delete an email? I’m with you. I think Facebook and LinkedIn can only be free for one reason: they leverage your personal information for business deals, making lots of money off of it. I personally don’t understand the allure of Facebook and LinkedIn. I have a website that has just what I want on it. I email or call or talk in person with people I really want to talk to. Anybody can google me and find my website, and it has only the stuff I want people to know on it. I have full control of its contents, and didn’t have to forfeit my privacy to get it.
Hi Alec, I see your question to LinkedIn was mailed to them on 06/20/2011. It’s 07/30/2011 and I’m having the same issue. I guess team was not so dedicated, or highly qualified and might not be working as diligently to resolve this as stated by Darci. This is Crazy.
I still haven’t had this issue fixed. So LinkedIn are slowly going onto my blacklist of spamming companies with no respect for users.
Facebook and Plaxo are already on that list. Google doesn’t spam but is effectively extension of the NSA at this point.
Somebody recently said to me that the age of privacy is coming: when no one puts anything online or joins any social networks.
The sooner the better if this is the best LinkedIn and all the rest can do.
I’m getting requests from this Linkedin from people I don’t even know. I’m a teacher and feel especially threatened by the Chinese-style monitoring Facebook is implementing in the West. It’s all the more a threat given how it goes out of its way to invade people’s privacy. Just look at the risks in simply using Facebook to comment: Websites are permitted, without any real reason, to access your basic information including your name, “profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends and any other information I’ve shared with everyone”. It allows the site to send you unsolicited email. It can actually send any post it wants to your Wall- status messages, notes, photos, videos, etc… You have absolutely no control over the content. Worryingly is can “access my data any time” without saying exactly what data it will be accessing and for what purpose, and even “access my data when I’m not using the application.” All very useful when Facebook tries to convince the Chinese to let it be allowed to be used within that country in exchange for such valuable information and technology; just the type of behaviour fascist states need! Thank God I live in Germany that is putting a stop to this- so much for America being the land of the free…
I CLOSED my Linkedin account and they are STILL sending me mail!
I’m responsible for some 10000+ corporate SMTP-servers which now all reject messages associated with linkedin domains. These rules are implemented on request from clients. Recruiters are about the only business who’s managers aren’t yet fed up with the linkedin garbage. Some HR-droids want to use information from linkedin, but they are generally advised to use external disposable accounts for that.
I am so upset I put my primary email address on Linkedin (which I didn’t do on Facebook). I joined both of these social websites to keep in touch with actual groups I am an active member of but LI quickly wore out my welcome mat. I’ve tried to remove my welcome mat but LI ignores my closed account still to this day. Hopefully anyone reading this is smarter than I was and takes these warnings to heart and uses a throwaway email account to subscribe if at all. WARNING: You will not be able to unsubscribe no matter what their website states!!!!!
Hi ph,
Thanks for the feedback. Who are the tools running LinkedIn? Can they possibly think that getting banned from the workplace and enraging their end users is a good business plan?
It looks like MySpace syndrome. Off to a good start and then annoy the users as much as possible until Facebook comes along and eats your lunch.
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the detailed feedback. For anyone else, BEFORE you close your account be sure to change your email address to one which you can verify and then turn off. Give it a week or two for the new email address to take before cancelliing your account.
I found this site through Google… My problem is that one of my domains will expire soon, and LinkedIn keeps sending Group-emails to that accounts. After deleting the account I would have expected to receive the emails in my primary account, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. After reading the above, I’m not sure if I’d even want LinkedIn emails in my normal serious spam-free emailaccount…
LinkedIn is FULL of buggs (or maybe not? maybe what we kindly classify as “bug”, is actually LinkedIn’s trashy “company policy”??) and a few days after changing the old email address and DELETING it from LinkedIn, I can confirm to 100% that LinkedIn is fraudulently KEEPING your old email in their database, and keeps using it to spam you AND (which is 1000000 times worse! as it was confirmed by other users too!) keeps matching / recommending your profile to other people based on your OLD email (the “erased one” so to say …)
A HUGE privacy breech, maybe some great case for some good lawyers out there? If not in the US, at least in Europe somewhere?
Run away from LinkedIn as fast as you can, all they want is your private information that they can than sell for fat $ to advertising agencies and dizzy “recruiters”
The first email I received from linkedin asked me to verify the ID of a friend, which I assumed was just that. So I did, with no intention of joining whatsoever, as I suspected it was a con from the start, which probably was ‘linked in’ to US secret service organizations.
Then the spamming started, with emails every few days asking me to actualize my account. All were spammed without being opened, mainly because I was never able to see the point of linkedin.
Later I saw I was being mentioned on search engines, as having a linkedin account, which was waiting for me to fill in my details. I knew it was me because there’s nobody in the country I live in with my name. There aren’t even many in the world.
I cannot for the life of me see what purpose the organisation serves except for its shareholders who profit from selling your details.
Linkedin continues to send me emails 1.5-2 years after I deleted my account with them.
They lie and you have no control over your information. I only have myself to blame.
They are legit emails from them as they are Network updates from “messages-noreply@bounce.linkedin.com.au” with the link to their Security Footter Help Page at the end of the emails. help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4788
I’ve also unsubscribed multiple times but keep getting emails. As far as I can remember I’ve never had a Linkedin account.
What happened to that team of dedicated professionals looking into the problem back in 2011?
Yes, April 2014 here, almost may…
This fat guy must have gained a few more pounds because these emails NEVER stopped coming.
I’ve changed my email addresses but now I just get spam emails for BOTH inboxes!
I joined Linked In in response to an invitation by a close friend. It turned out that when she joined Linked In, unbeknown to her, they copied her email address book and sent invitations to every contact! She immediately cancelled her account as did all her friends who had responded.
The problem is that now I am receiving spam emails from everything to Russian girls wanting a great man to fake businesses sending me invoices. I report them to the Spam Intelligence Agency but they just keep coming!!
Sep 18, 2017, facing the same issue. Don’t put an important email address in your linkedin account.
Intriguing that LinkedIn claimed to be working to fix this bug in 2011 – 7 years ago. Clearly they employ the worlds’ worst programmers. The bug is still there. I deleted one of my email addresses on LinkedIn (originally the primary email address) some weeks ago – but I’m still receiving the majority of emails from LinkedIn on that email address. Fortunately, the reason I did so is because I’ve cancelled that domain and it soon won’t exist – but that means I may not receive emails from LinkedIn contacts that I actually want. Seriously poor technical ability and service, sadly.
Thanks for the update, Ian. LinkedIn are truly evil. First they cannot manage their own databases, second they constantly try to lure you into providing your full address book and spamming everyone you know, third they shut down the API so no existing CRM can do anything useful with the data we have put into our LinkedIn accounts.
This last move was in a deadheaded attempt to get us to use some LinkedIn CRM tools.
Now that Microsoft owns LinkedIn, expect it to die a slow but lingering death. We no longer use Skype at Foliovision due to how Microsoft has botched Skype management. Skype was our number one communication tool for almost five years! And we were paid for Skype.