from Hacker News

LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes data of 92% of users, inferred salaries

by aburan28 on 6/29/21, 1:43 PM with 79 comments

  • by idorosen on 6/29/21, 2:38 PM

  • by dlsa on 6/29/21, 2:22 PM

    Meanwhile, in Norway...

    Norway: The country where no salaries are secret https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

    Removing anonymity of searching made a significant difference as did letting you know who looked you up. This is a form of social pressure that seems to balance out their need for transparency versus the "peeping tom" aspect of open salary data.

    There are some less than good social impacts but I'd say on balance the overall result is positive.

    I actually think any job ad without a salary indication should be seen with suspicion and mistrust. Its basically false or deceptive advertising. Its like going to a shop to buy some fruit but them being sheepish about the price. Negotiations then ensue and you give them an offer and they say "that isn’t realistic". But you easily counter with "well you should have listed the price". The ensuing negotiation includes sich phrases as "you should know the market" and all sorts of "competitive market" slogans.

    In the end they simply want to clamp the price down and take advantage of ignorance rather than any kind of ethical stance. We tolerate this unethical behavior because "that's how it is".

  • by deregulateMed on 6/29/21, 2:07 PM

    Privacy is trendy, but imagine if everyone had access to salary data.

    You find your coworker makes more money, you ask for more.

    Or if all medical data was public, we'd have a medical revolution in understanding.

    Or if your Facebook likes were public, other competing websites could generate a network easier.

    Sure there are downsides to open information, but I can't help to think that privacy benefits the few, openess benefits the masses.

    (Obligatory- doesn't apply to keys or whistleblowers, but I imagine they should be taking far greater precautions than using Apple who continuously bends to China and the US government)

  • by civilized on 6/29/21, 2:20 PM

    I try to look on the bright side these days. Can't wait to find out all the weird stuff LinkedIn knows or has completely wild-ass guessed about me!

    And by the way, recently YouTube has been serving me exclusively Spanish-language ads. I am probably 0% Hispanic ethnically and have no knowledge of Spanish. Would be cool to get a data leak that shows what's up with that!

  • by Ashanmaril on 6/29/21, 2:40 PM

    Is LinkedIn actually an important thing to have?

    I made one years ago and used to occasionally go in and update it, but with my most recent job I didn't even take the time to add it. The past few years I've really re-evaluated what should be public, easily-accessible information for anyone who knows my name.

    And all I get from having an account is recruiter spam, and emails for connection requests that are oddly written in first-person and have the person's name as the sender which seems weird.

  • by bttrfl on 6/29/21, 2:31 PM

    Were those phone numbers collected using "We need your phone number to increase your security" (or similar) or just added by users to their linkedin profiles?

  • by legulere on 6/29/21, 2:52 PM

    Any website already up to check if you were in that breach?

  • by tymekpavel on 6/29/21, 5:37 PM

    “Breached” seems like a strong word: “ LinkedIn tells Bloomberg in a statement that it looked into the matter and found that the data was web scraped public information from its site and other platforms.”

    So they scraped a bunch of websites including LinkedIn and created a joint dataset?

  • by Taylor_OD on 6/29/21, 2:52 PM

    You should shut down your linkedin if you are not actively looking for a job. It's a public resume which is a security concern at best.

  • by underseacables on 6/29/21, 2:10 PM

    Just reminded me that I still have a linked in profile. I never use the service, so I’m going to delete this profile.

  • by EricE on 6/29/21, 2:59 PM

    "There is no cloud, just someone else's computer"

    Probably my favorite sticker/meme.