Provider pops up on LinkedIn

Well, this is odd. I was going through my LinkedIn account today and had the name of a provider I saw a few times several years ago pop up. I know it's her because the e-mail address that came up with the name was very similar to one she used when I was seeing her. In one of those oops-I-didn't-mean-to-click-on-that moments, I clicked on the "invite" button. After I clicked on the link, the little box with her name in it went away, and I can't find her again. (I'll confess to not be terribly proficient at navigating LinkedIn yet.)

Since I can't locate her, I can't figure out how she popped up. I'm reasonably sure that I never gave her my last name, and I'm pretty sure we don't have any shared employers in our respective pasts.

The only thing I can think of is that someone I'm already linked to knows her in a non-hobby capacity.

I'm not as concerned about discretion as I might be with some other ladies, but I do find it interesting, and perhaps worthy of discussion from those of you who know social media better than I.

was she listed in her real-world name or in her hobby name?

wrt "The only thing I can think of is that someone I'm already linked to knows her in a non-hobby capacity."
i think linked in shows you people that your contacts know, people that those people knows, people that those people know ad infinitum until all LI members have been listed to you.

if you invited her, is she now in your contacts? there might be some sort of message or invite list in your LI profile where you could find her.


oh wow, sir lancelot just showed up in my list of possible LI contacts :^)

I ran into something similar, got message in my hobby email about a lady wanting to link via Linkedin. Of course I my Linkedin account has nothing to do with that email address.

was she listed in her real-world name or in her hobby name? Originally Posted by pmdelites

I'm pretty sure she used her real first name in the hoby world. IIRC, there was some overlap between her hobby world and what she did in the real world, at least at times.

if you invited her, is she now in your contacts? there might be some sort of message or invite list in your LI profile where you could find her.

She has to accept before we're linked and she shows up in my list of contacts.

oh wow, sir lancelot just showed up in my list of possible LI contacts :^)

Careful. "Lancelot" is a mod. I'm "Lancehernot," like in "don't get to fuck her."

This just gets weirder.

I'm going through the list of "people you might know," and there's another provider (whose name was pretty easy to figure out when she gave me a business card with an email address that included her last name for another venture she was involved in). I don't know how she'd know my RL name. And somehow the ex-fiance of a girl I saw 15 years ago pops up, even though we never (thank God) had any contact.

Could be the stealth harvesting contact issue with LinkedIn. The website and mobile application were recently outted for pulling in users contact lists without permission. If you're using the same computer or device to hobby that you use for LinkedIn that is where the issue most likely originated. It does triangulate and try to make connections (suggested ones) for you. The downside of this is that LinkedIn also suggests your profile (with real world name) as a suggested connection for the other people in your harvested contact list (including providers, etc).

It does all this without your permission nor alerting you that your contact details were pushed to others.

Here's one story on it

It does triangulate and try to make connections (suggested ones) for you. Originally Posted by SD2011

I understand some of that. But I don't understand how people I haven't searched for, contacted, or even thought about in years show up.

if you have her email address in your contact list and you imported your email contact list into linked in, they got you. because they harvest your email contact list for the 'people you may know'

edit...what sd2011 said, didn't see his response

Nope, never imported e-mail addresses from anywhere, not even RL acccounts. And the e-mail address on the LinkedIn account has had no contact with the hobby world. None. Ever.

You have to watch Linkedin. It will sneak a question by you that lets it access your email contacts.

If one provider is connected to another, they will be "people you might know".

I accidentally accepted connection (I'll blame it on the damned mouse) from a lady I used to go to for massages. She also offered L1 so I didn't think that would be a good idea. I "unlinked" her and haven't heard anything since.

These social sites are causing more grief than you know. I use Linkedin but nothing else. I have a minimal FaceBook account but don't accept friends or posts. I had to create it because I was trying to access something related to them.

Even Google needs a lot of cleaning up if you use GV. Calls and texts are everywhere.

"Privacy" has been completely redefined.

You have to watch Linkedin. It will sneak a question by you that lets it access your email contacts. Originally Posted by OldGrump

Yes they pester you and pester you about it over and over until you click. You may have inadvertently clicked it without out even knowing what you were really agreeing to by clicking.

Doesn't make sense about the email thing, but who the hell knows, maybe the NSA is involved somehow, they seem to have shit on everyone.

Big Data can triangulate you in many ways, hard to escape it.

No contact lists. Not in Outlook, not in the web browsers. When one of my accounts was sending spam a while back, I traced it back to the contact list stored on the web. I emptied it and haven't used it for any accounts since. I don't automatically add receipients to the contact list when I send, and I check to make sure periodically.

Assuming that what I think is true might not be, might someone show up in my "people you might know list" if they or one of their contacts was looking for me?

You can turn off automatic updates (good idea) and automatic harvesting of your email contacts. It's best to add your contacts as you want them with something besides the canned LI "here I am" message. The real culprit here is not having someone hold your hand on the front end of LI AND you got some hooker email addys in your contacts somewhere. The thing to remember about linked in is just say "no" till you know your way around. And they WILL go to great lengths to trap you into dumping your email contacts for them, the other guys are correct.

Remember, Linkedin and Google are friends..