LinkedIn struggles with advertising and privacy

LinkedIn falls into the privacy trap as well. It seems that few are immune to the backlash that inevitable occurs when social sites (and others) integrate advertising and attempt to leverage user data to provide highly-targeted, personalized and relevant promotional material.

The problem is that for many, LinkedIn is not a site that we monitor carefully for such stupid behavior. I love LinkedIn and while I'm a frequent user, I haven't paid a great deal of attention to their latest updates and was in fact unaware that they were running social ads, ones that contain images of myself or my connections. I guess I was on vacation when this article came out and didn't know that there was a new feature to turn off.

Naturally, others have noticed and there's been a bit of backlash against LinkedIn's introduction of new ad formats that integrate member activities into advertising. And rightly so. I've looked through my InBox and don't see any privacy updates from LinkedIn, so I'm right there with the protestors now. I realized that you need to keep the money rolling in, but nothing says "leave" like "privacy violations"!

Fix your settings

While LinkedIn has made some changes, they've now joined the ranks of untrustworthy sites. So for those of you lagging behind or simply just catching up on things, head to your Settings, select the Account tab, and select Manage Social Advertising. While you're there, you might as well do the rounds and check through all your settings, you might find a few other surprises.

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