Microsoft Is Requiring Lynda.com Users To Create LinkedIn Profiles (zdnet.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet:
Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016, a year after LinkedIn had purchased online learning portal Lynda.com. This year, 2019, Microsoft is moving all Lynda.com customers to LinkedIn Learning... As students and faculty return to school, many are just discovering now that their colleges, universities and libraries are undertaking this move. But not everyone's onboard. Specifically, some libraries are up in arms over a new requirement for library patrons to create a LinkedIn profile in order to access the LinkedIn Learning/Lynda.com service...
The American Library Association said earlier this summer that it believed the requirement of a LinkedIn profile "would significantly impair library users' privacy rights." Library users were able to log into Lynda.com using a library card and a PIN with no other personal information required. Microsoft isn't backing down, as this LinkedIn Learning blog post from June, entitled "Our Commitment to Libraries," makes clear....
In addition to citing authentication reasons for the LinkedIn profile requirement, Microsoft also is pitching the creation of a LinkedIn profile as a way to get better curated, customized content. Microsoft also is looking to LinkedIn Learning as a way to potentially upsell users to LinkedIn's Premium Career features, such as InMail, access to who's viewed their profiles and "competitive insights on other job applicants," as this Frequently Asked Questions document about the Lynda.com to LinkedIn Learning migration indicates.
The American Library Association said earlier this summer that it believed the requirement of a LinkedIn profile "would significantly impair library users' privacy rights." Library users were able to log into Lynda.com using a library card and a PIN with no other personal information required. Microsoft isn't backing down, as this LinkedIn Learning blog post from June, entitled "Our Commitment to Libraries," makes clear....
In addition to citing authentication reasons for the LinkedIn profile requirement, Microsoft also is pitching the creation of a LinkedIn profile as a way to get better curated, customized content. Microsoft also is looking to LinkedIn Learning as a way to potentially upsell users to LinkedIn's Premium Career features, such as InMail, access to who's viewed their profiles and "competitive insights on other job applicants," as this Frequently Asked Questions document about the Lynda.com to LinkedIn Learning migration indicates.
"Microsoft also is pitching the creation of..." (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft also is pitching the creation of a LinkedIn profile as a way to get better curated, customized content."
Uh huh, M$. You're pitching it as a way to get your hooks in another person's data so you can sell it to advertisers.
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It used to be "all about the Benjamins", now it's "all about that sweet, sweet user data" (which of course translates into Benjamins later).
If Microsoft can't attract users organically, it'll just buy 'em in bulk.
Makes me glad I never got a LinkedIn profile.
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Who needs what reading in 2019 and who provides the most of that type of in demand content.
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As a guy who got his most recent contract gig (paying well over $200/hr) on LinkedIn, all I can say is THANK YOU for reducing the competition!
You're welcome!
(Also, some of us don't need LinkedIn to get a job.)
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This sounds illegal. Under GDPR you can't force people to sign up for this kind of abuse of their personal data just to get some service you provide. It might force educators to stop using it because they can't force their students to sign up either.
If it's not absolutely essential to providing the service requested then it has to be opt-in and can't be coerced/forced.
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Just have a setting for the EU. No need to risk the detection of
The rest of the world can be linked to what they need to learn and what skills they have.
Along with all the gov/mil work they feel free to list online
Every EU worker with skills that dont show due to full EU GDPR "protections" is work found by another nations skilled worker
Someone from a New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan,
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I suddenly had to log in to see my list of recently edited documents in MS Word. I immediayely replaced it with LibreOffice.
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I've owned my own domain for nearly 20 years now. I create a different email address for every company I do business with, auto-forwarded to my real email address. If I have to register with them, or I order something from them, or they request an email address in case they want to contact me (rebate companies), they get their own unique email address. I do t
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it's just a way to try to make the awfully stupid linkedin purchase make them some money some day... somehow...
also, current linkedin in a nutshell "It's like facebook. but we'll actually sell the information facebook refused to sell you! and you'll have less privacy because 'want' people to view your shit".
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Although the Constitution does not explicitly include the right to privacy, the Supreme Court has found that the Constitution implicitly grants a right to privacy against governmental intrusion from the First Amendment, Third Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment.
Meanwhile (Score:2)
I'm considering to leave Linkedin since I get a large number of contact requests from people I don't know so it has changed from a convenient address repository to an annoyance.
Leaving (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm considering to leave Linkedin since I get a large number of contact requests from people I don't know so it has changed from a convenient address repository to an annoyance.
Speaking of leaving, Lynda.com had a unique culture and feel to it before LinkedIn bought it. It had a reputation for being a very learner friendly environment for people trying to pick some skill up for the first time. It had a rep as the kind of place your aunt could go to learn a tech skill without being overly complicated or nerdy. Very popular with its customer base, who were very loyal. Now it's being morphed into something completely different, without the friendly, join-the-club feel it once had. I suspect long time members will abandon it as Microsoft uses its corpse in yet another attempt to ape what Facebook and Google are doing.
Another rotten recruiter further ruining the trade (Score:3)
I got off linkedin when I ditched other social networks but I have to tell you. The number of clueless recruiters who don't know the difference between java, kubernetes, and linux is just astounding. Yeah I don't need a service the facilitates the laziness of people who are like "Wow so impressed with your resume" so that they can line me up for a degrading phone screen where I log into leetcode and see how many old algorithm questions I remember off the top of my head.
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I have figured out it's leeches, not recruiters. Selling you for $15/hour for a task worth $150/hour.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:5, Interesting)
I did leave LinkedIn, it's the one social network that is both easy to leave because you're unlikely to have much of a friends and family association to it, and it's also sensible to leave because LinkedIn is one of the most gaping security holes for businesses on the planet.
It literally blasts wide open on the public internet all the information you need about a business and it's employees, their positions, their past, and their colleagues to be able to social engineer your way not just into any business, but into employees lives for the purposes of fraud too. Made even worse by the fact it suffered a major data breach exposing passwords and e-mail addresses.
You can literally spot someone's security lanyard on your commute, walking, the train, the bus, look them up on LinkedIn, find out what department they work in, and make plausible requests to the weak links in the business such as "Hi, I'm Rob's boss, John. Rob's the new guy with the red hair that started 2 months ago, I need you to..." reset his password/give me his phone number/whatever the fuck else you may wish to try and access and with such a sufficiently plausible approach you'll be able to find at least one mug in any organisation to follow through with it.
LinkedIn isn't the only source of such information, but it's both the largest, and it's privacy options are so weak that it positively invites this kind of interaction, more so than even Facebook.
Companies who give a shit about security should be actively discouraging their employees from using LinkedIn, it's a social engineer's wet dream.
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I never put my current employer in my LinkedIn profile. I only put in a generic description of the type of company I'm working for. That's what I'll be doing going forward. It protects me and my employer... if I can even be arsed to log in and actually update my profile, which I haven't done in years.
The hope is that it will make LinkedIn relevant (Score:3)
If they can make the lynda.com users sign up for linkedin, that will make up for some of the loses as people leave LI.
This is a data slurp pure and simple (Score:3)
OR
This is more of Microsoft saying...
"You WILL do it our way OR not at ALL"
This is the old MS up to its tricks again. Don't believe any of this friendly-friendly crap around Linux that they are spouting if you give them half a chance.
IT really is time for the US to re-open their Anti-trust case against them. They are clearly trying to dominate the market even more than they do at present.
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> "LinkedIn presumes to supersede a library's authority to authenticate patrons - a gross overstep," she said.
> Furthermore, this also complicates the life of some libraries that are bound by state laws -- such as in Connecticut and California -- to protect patrons' personally identifiable information.
Microsoft might not care that much about a fine for breaking a state law, but I can't wait to see their response should a EU citizen sic the potential of a 4% of global income fine on them for deliberate
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You misinterpreted the quote. Microsoft isn't breaking the law here and wouldn't be liable, so of course they don't give a shit. The library would be breaking a privacy law by furnishing access to a service that requires the user to surrender PII.
The EU's GDPR--well, we'll have to see how that plays out.
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While the focus here is on libraries, does this not apply to anyone with a Lynda account, in that PII that is unnecessary for the operation of the account is required to be submitted to continue using it?
The library would be in breach of their data controller status by continuing to offer the service because of this, but that is a far lesser breach than Microsoft's, who are indeed liable as it is them that are demanding the data in the first place.
"Up to old tricks" (Score:2)
This is the old MS up to its tricks again.
This is pretty much the standard MO for every tech giant now. The silicon megacorps buy up smaller outfits, assimilate them, Borg-like, and then tell customers "this is the way things are now". It's not just Microsoft. It's Apple. It's Google. It's Facebook. It's Twitter too.
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HaveIBeenPwned.com (Score:5, Informative)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
I have had sextortion emails to my old LinkedIn email account from at least 6 separate Bitcoin accounts.
I have since left LinkedIn based on a SlashDot article
https://ask.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
From HaveIBeenPwned:
LinkedIn: In May 2016, LinkedIn had 164 million email addresses and passwords exposed. Originally hacked in 2012, the data remained out of sight until being
offered for sale on a dark market site 4 years later. The passwords in the breach were stored as SHA1 hashes without salt, the vast majority of which were quickly
cracked in the days following the release of the data.
Compromised data: Email addresses, Passwords
NEVER (Score:2)
I use linda for training too!!! (Score:3)
I use linda for training too!!! Those videos always have tons of seeders so you know they're good.
Which means first lesson you'll learn at Lynda.com (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wish these companies will move on from trying to find direct links between web activity and actual users.
Microsoft is all about personal data now... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Too late. Google got there first. [nest.com]
Both of them? (Score:2)
Nft
Fake it till you make it (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why not just fake it? Make up a fake name, set up a burner email, have some fun with it, make up a whole backstory for your fake character. When a corporation requests personal data, I feel no obligation to provide my actual personal data.
Isn't this what everybody has been doing all along? Did anybody *really* put their actual details in when they created their first Hotmail account? Who are these people that see a "Name" field on an internet form and say "oh no I'm being forced and abused by the corporations!"?
Good old Microsoft (Score:2)
And I do mean “old” Microsoft, back when it couldn’t come up with a original idea to save its life.
This is straight out of Google’s playbook, but with significantly inferior components. Remember when Google started requiring Google+ tie-ins for almost everything you’d want to do on YouTube, hoping it would boost Google+’s fortunes? That failed spectacularly despite YouTube’s huge popularity.
How many profiles can "Bill Gates" have? (Score:2)
Pfff. (Score:1)
It's their site (Score:2)
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In ... I forget how many years ... on LI, (Score:2)
To say that 99% of it has been irrelevant would be an underestimate.
Good news for PluralSight (Score:1)
This is good news for PluralSight. The more annoyed Lynda.com users are, the more likely it is they will seek out a competitor. I already pay for PluralSight as, for my needs, I see it as cheaper yet superior to Lynda.com.
That might have sounded like a commercial. I am not affiliated with PluralSight, though I want to create content for it someday, so forgive the commericial sounding post.