Got a notification from LinkedIn saying "You're one of the few experts who have been invited to collaborate on ..." I got curious and opened up the link.
Apparently, now instead of professional writers being paid to pen down their, usually, cohesive & authentic views, LinkedIn is trying out the idea of generating content using an LLM and then asking for free editorial services from users in exchange for "badges" 🤯 🤦♂️
This is cheap IMO. Even for LinkedIn.
What's happened to the "content team" at LinkedIn!?
Adult Friend Finder lol. Like, I kind of expected it with that company, but not so much LinkedIn.
The jury's out on exactly what happened. Maybe it was cyber crime, and someone had managed to infect a handful of websites, or maybe it was some underhanded commercial venture that certain places signed up to. I just know that my email address was only ever used on that website - the address didn't even technically exist either, I own a domain and make up emails on the fly, which filter through to my actual accounts. I've been doing this for years, and actually very few places compromised my email - which is why LinkedIn and AFF stand out so much.
Incidentally, I later created a new account with LinkedIn with a new email and didn't have this issue. However, I do still get occassional spam - and spam that is related to my career - so apparently there is still some way people can get LinkedIn email addresses.
I get spam to my work account saying that they got my information from LinkedIn. The e-mail I use on linkedin is a spam collection account that I never use for anything real. I check it every couple of months and delete the entire inbox.
The only place they could get my contact information is one of my suppliers has a shitty webpage design with my info listed. Easy for a bot to scrape and sell.
My current theory is that the professional "sales list" data collection companies are running scraped data against Linkedin data and claiming it came from there.
I get e-mails from from companies who want to sell "sales lead" lists to me as well as a few poorly targeted fools who bought the "sales lead" list from them.