Figure 0: I’m the boss? Not really!
Introduction
It’s been happening for a couple of days now. My LinkedIn account is sending out hundreds (>600) of connection requests that I did not authorize, as shown in Figure 1. This is making me feel like I am LinkedOut, rather than LinkedIn to my professional network.
Figure 1 – LinkedIn has repeatedly sent out hundreds of invitation requests that I didn’t authorize. I don’t like it at all!
Once I first saw this happen yesterday, my wife and I spent many minutes withdrawing the requests – one by one on our mobile device! Once we did that, I thought the problem was over and that it was a one-time technological fluke.
The reason this is a particularly nasty problem for me is that I have a contact database that is extensive, born out of 30 years of consulting and 15 years of developing youth sports programs. Since I’ve worked with many hundreds of kids, I have a lot of email addresses that are being used to expand my LinkedIn network, although I did not authorize this action!
Today
After withdrawing all requests yesterday, the same thing happened again without my permission. I have no idea why this is happening, so I’ve done all that I know how to do to stop it.
If it continues, I’m going to blast my LinkedIn account and say goodbye to the service. That would be a shame since I like reading articles from the people in my network.
My Questions to You!
Has this happened to you and did you find a solution? If so, please leave me a comment on how you solved this frustrating problem. Thanks in advance!
LinkedIn has a innocent looking button that you may have pushed accidentally authorizing them to harvest ALL of your email contacts for their marketing purposes.
I didn’t hit that button! I’ve known about it for years. I hate that thing. This is something else.
Ken, how did you get to those views you show in the post? Perhaps that has something to do with you being a Premium member? I just have the Standard membership, and I’ve not found any options to manage my invitations.
I found the Manage Invitations page under My Network, also found this link for withdrawing invitations: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/topics/6096/6097/62008
I don’t have the option to withdraw “Contacts imported from your address book”, the 3rd bullet under Step 4. I’ve not used that feature, which may explain why I don’t see that option.