I haven’t tried to log into my account for a few weeks because LinkedIn is a cesspool. When I logged in just now (with a passkey, btw), it brought me to this page.
I’ve had this account for over a decade and used it to get my current position. I don’t want to use LinkedIn, but it’s pretty much a requirement in my industry.
I’m not sure if I should cave or what. I read the privacy policy for Persona’s ID verification and it states that the data is immediately destroyed after verification, or held for three years.
This shit should be fucking illegal, and yet, in much of the world, it’s being made enforced legislation. Fuck any company and politician that supports, funds, or operates this bullshit.
through Persona
My account is still locked and I can’t delete it. I even filed a GDPR report but apparently GDPR doesn’t apply if it’s a “security requirement”. So note if you want to bypass GDPR and capitalize on personally identifiable information (PII) all you have to do is pretend it’s for security because literally everything can be used for security in some form.
I had the same happen to me
There was no suspicious activity or unauthorized access, they just want to steal your personal information, is all
That this is legal in any way shape or form, anywhere, is just insane. The LinkedIn CEO should be jailed over this, it’s the only way they learn to not be criminals
I should back up my CV.
Has anyone actually landed a good job on LinkedIn anyway?
In seriously asking. The last time I checked the app was full of low-ball offers, bots, and a lot of applications that the companoes completely ignore if you apply on LinkedIn.
A frustration of mine is that hr at my current company will not allow hiring of a candidate that doesn’t have a LinkedIn account. I’ve had to ask a couple people that wanted to work on my team to create LinkedIn accounts otherwise I wouldn’t be able to hire them.
It’s mostly spam these days and fake postings for ghost jobs, and then bots auto applying to those postings. I would say 5 percent or maybe 10 at most are legit. I have found a few jobs through there.
However since ChatGPT became a thing they offer near minimum wage now for senior engineers in a lot of places, salaries are half at best of what they were in 2024.
Last year a company shot me a message and now I work there. It was excellent timing on their part, because I was very unhappy with my employer back then.
I feel like LinkedIn has changed a lot since then, though. The platform is overrun with AI slop and I’m seriously thinking about deleting my account.
Has anyone actually landed a good job on LinkedIn anyway?
Yes. In my region it’s a primary tool for job hunting and recruiters.
Yes, plenty of people do. Unfortunately for me, the original promise of LinkedIn has been lost. Originally it was meant to help people maintain their professional network by not losing track of people they had worked with in the past. Over the years, it has turned into nothing more than a place for recruiters to fish in. It feels like a dating site for workers and recruiters to find each other.
I feel you. Unfortunately it still has the main purpose. Its really just that people treat it like a social media site. Im on it as a way to verify I worked places by my connections to people who also worked there and to get and giver references and basically to have an online resume. I do sorta like like the messaging as a way to put up a bit more of a bar to contact to me over spamming my email. One thing that kind of cracks me up but I put forward with ai is if it was so good it should theoretically make finding and filling positions almost automatic since it should be able to parse anyone who is actively looking for work.
I got my current job by working for a contracting agency and getting placed at various firms. Then at this one my boss asked me to work for them.
LinkedIn got me into my current company about four years ago. I’ve snagged one or two interviews with it since then.
In my experience, it’s only really used by recruiters for Fortune 500 companies looking for specialists.
No. All of my good jobs have come through excellent job placement companies.
This is the second person I’ve seen (without even trying) in a week running into this. Since Lemmy is still so small in the social media world, I can only imagine the actual number affected is huge. Someone’s trying to collect all the data they can before Trump (hopefully) gets somewhat neutered in the coming election & they can’t get away with it as easily anymore.
I have also been locked out of mine for this reason
Third here, and I’ve personally heard of other cases as well over the past 4-ish months
You’re delusional if you think Liberals will stop web ID. They are the ones implementing it in the UK, Canada, Australia, and EU.
The entire turnkey-totalitarian mass surveillance apparatus America has constructed over the last few decades was expanded throughout Conservative and Liberal majorities. It’s one of the few things they always agreed on, and consistently passed with little debate or fanfare.
There’s a reason the Black Panthers coined the phrase “scratch a Liberal and you’ll find a fascist” several decades ago; they’d already propelled the Nazis to victory in Germany decades before that.
The US Republicans are so bad, people forget that the Democratic party is also pretty shitty. We could have had Sanders as a president in 2016 if the DNC didn’t refuse it and shove Hillary down our throats. The DNC doesn’t want to be very “left”.
This is an interesting pattern. Two reasonable things to get the upvote, and then a hard turn at the end.
Unless you’re switching jobs in the next 2 years delete it. Things don’t stay normal for longer than that
I read the privacy policy for Persona’s ID verification and it states that the data is immediately destroyed after verification, or held for three years.
So which is it?
If it was destroyed after verification they wouldn’t have been able to leak the personal IDs of millions of users just a few months ago.
Neither. It’s never destroyed because you can’t prove otherwise. At best it’s given to authorities within three years to free up storage space.
It’s both destroyed and exists, until a data breach happens, in which case it definitely exists
Schrodinger’s personal data
Its deleted in your country but store safely offshore
Deleted is set to true in that record.
The classic “Mark as deleted”
Happened to me like a year ago, i caved and did the persona thing and they still after i gave all the info they wanted locked my account. Now i have no way of making an account or they will just lock that one too. I really hate linkedin and how it’s trying to have the monopoly on job seeking networks…
My spouse had a similar experience. She had an old account she couldn’t access so she tried to create a new one with a different email, but they blocked that. She did the whole Persona thing and they just said no. She contacted their support and they said they couldn’t do anything. So now she has no LinkedIn account and can’t get one.
Thin doesn’t seem like an essential service that needs my ID for anything.
Then you must not be looking for a job to pay your bills and feed your family.
Lots of people have never gotten a job on LinkedIn. Like another poster said, unless you’re a specialist searching for a fortune 500 placement, it is not at all critical to the hiring process.
Lots of people have never gotten a job on LinkedIn
Lots of people also have. You shouldn’t have to choose between getting the best job that you’re most qualified for, and forking over your very personal information to a company with a very recent history of leaking it by the millions.
True, but to even insinuate that it is a requirement to get gainful employment, which you seem to have done, is false.
It sucks that Microsoft is turning the platform worse by the month, and that some employers fish in that pond, but it is not by any means the only way to get a great job.
Some people have the luxury of favorable job prospects, and they can be more discerning about what they put themselves through to get in front of potential employers. That isn’t something they’re doing wrong or deserve admonishment for.
It is 100% required to get the best possible job. Most people cannot afford to just ignore one of the most-used employment platforms in existence. It can cost them tens of thousands of dollars a year. Not something you can afford to skip out on in a world where wages have stagnated for the last 20 years.
I dont think its at all feasible to confirm or deny that claim. I currently have the best job I’ve ever had and I did not use LinkedIn. Could I have gotten a better one if I had used it? Impossible to say.
Also, anyone that accepts a job from somewhere other than LinkedIn, even if they are also using it, isn’t taking a worse offer; they just got the best one from somewhere else.
I currently have the best job I’ve ever had and I did not use LinkedIn
Does this really require an explanation? There are tons of potential opportunities that you are overlooking if you never even looked at LI. Would they be better? Maybe, maybe not. It’s quite possible though.
My suggestions would be to either block Linkedin at firewall level, or to cave in but to plaster everywhere you can, including within Linkedin, their datahoarding/telescreen¹ attempt travestied as privacy. Or to block it and still plaster the situation everywhere.
¹1984 reference
I’d see if you could request deletion of the account and come back in a few years and create a new one. But there are no guarantees they won’t just require it for all new accounts.
Or just see how it goes without having one. Maybe create and maintain a mastodon account on an industry-relevant instance.
I had to threaten a GDPR lawsuit on them to do this. I got locked out the same way a year ago and was going to delete my account anyway. Sent a trackable letter to their HQ in Europe and a follow up after not hearing back, eventually my account was removed.
How did you do this? I made a gdpr report and got declined because “gdpr does not apply for security” so my account is still locked with my photo and my private information years later now. Maybe snail mail legal threat would actually work.
Snail mail with tracking, I gave them my legal address (moved shortly after) and email as verification. I requested the deletion of all my data but never actually regained access to my account. There are plenty of templates online so you use the correct wording, set an appropriate deadline, etc.
Eventually my account disappeared, but I never received any actual confirmation from them.
Thanks I will give this a shot and spend my weekend because how dirty LinkedIn did me. I don’t even care about the data anymore - it’s just pure anger now 😤
Good luck!
I was going to ask about that – how to delete my account if I get locked out and won’t provide my ID. It sounds like a real hassle. I had my LinkedIn account suspended for a long time now because I don’t find that website useful, but I still wanted to have options. This year I received a few emails from them telling me that some of my contacts solved some online quizzes on LinkedIn and that I should try. Who has time for online quizzes?! That must be the same type of person who plays Solitaire on their Windows PC. And also they are probably bored at their job, I’m not (quite the contrary).
If you’re in Europe a GDPR claim used to carry weight when contacting any company. But this has changed too, that law & order president over there is demonstrating how US companies are allowed to behave. But worth a try, maybe look into legal insurance beforehand and then it could be fun to take to court.
I like online quizzes, they’re fun for the commute home
Same here. Also with enabled 2FA. I suspect this is because I’m using a VPN.
I certainly will not give them my ID. luckily it is not that high of importance to me but still, there are contacts that I would like to to be able access.
Are there maybe other ways to proof proper ownership of the account?
