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When importing linkedIn to my Careers profile I get asked whether I accept the access to my profile requested by SO.

These include:

  • Your profile overview
    Name, photo, headline, and current positions
  • Your full profile
    Full profile including experience, education, skills, and recommendations
  • Your connections
    Your 1st and 2nd degree connections
  • Invitations and messages
    Send messages and invitations to connect as you

I don't think SO needs to know my connections, but I can live with it (#3).
What I can't live with is #4; linkedIn, and my connections, are professional. I don't think unsolicited messages to 'connect' or anything via that account is acceptable.

Is there any way to opt out of just that last one?

Confused about what mandatory meta tag to put this under. Should I be requesting this feature be made?

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Fair point, but ██ing LinkedIn does that (sending unsolicited messages on your behalf) all the time itself, too. I burninated my LinkedIn account yesterday because I finally got fed up with this. –  Pëkka Jul 27 '13 at 13:24
FYI, this is not about "unsolicited messages to 'connect'". Careers allows you to send invitiations to your connections, but you have to actually choose to do that yourself. This doesn't invalidate your request; I just wanted to answer your implied accusation. –  balpha Jul 27 '13 at 13:32
Oh, so it doesn't do this automatically? I thought it was going to send a bunch of messages as soon as I gave it my credentials. It makes sense if it is just allowing SO to send messages if I use its interface to do so. –  Hashbrown Jul 27 '13 at 13:57
If you make your comment an answer I'll accept it, others might come here with the same assumption and not bother to read these comments, @balpha –  Hashbrown Jul 27 '13 at 13:59
I'll let the Careers devs handle this. I personally think that your request makes sense -- if someone wants to import the profile from LinkedIn but not allow write access, seems like a nice thing to give them that possibility (as long as it's possible, which in this case it is). –  balpha Jul 27 '13 at 14:04
Agreed, I just trust SO [not to do it unless i say], that's why I was willing to allow it. Would that change the question, though? –  Hashbrown Jul 27 '13 at 14:15

1 Answer 1

up vote 6 down vote accepted

We have never and will not ever send out a message to your LinkedIn connections on your behalf. We ask for this permission solely so you can invite your connections to join Careers 2.0. Without you taking an explicit action, this permission will go unused on our side.

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Thanks, yeah I assumed the list that was presented was what it was trying to do from the get-go, not a list of abilities to be used whenever you want. –  Hashbrown Jul 29 '13 at 21:45

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