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I have had an unbelievable email exchange with LinkedIn over the fact that LinkedIn has been, without my permission, adding my LinkedIn connections to my smartphone's contacts list.



Here is the email chain. I've been corresponding with a joker who called himself Santosh (who knows if this is a real person or not?). His emails are so outrageous that I even wonder whether someone in Customer Service is doing this on purpose just to have a little fun. You will see from his emails that he seems to have no idea what he is talking about. He repeatedly ignores my polite requests for him to put me in contact with a supervisor.



SENT TO LINKEDIN on 4/4/2014



Lisa,



I hope that this reaches you. You sent me an email on 3/13 (see attached PDF with email chain) saying that you have been assigned to my case. I therefore am hoping to correspond with you directly on this.



I sent you an email last week inquiring about the status of this case.



Unfortunately, I received in response yet another wildly off-base email from Santosh (please see attached PDF for email chain). This time, he went on about how "those invitations might have been sent from the People You May Know feature," and "Laurie, if it would help, I can withdraw all invitations to anyone who hasn't already responded. Later when you're ready, you can invite the people you really want." -- This is not and never was about invitations! It is about connections' contact info showing up on my smartphone contacts list without my permission. (Santosh, if you are reading this, please do NOT touch anything on my account.)



Apparently Santosh either intercepted my email or perhaps was asked to respond to it; i don't know which. But I can't make any sense out of what he says, because he always seems to be responding to some problem completely different from the one I reported. I would prefer not to be contacted by Santosh any more.



:Lisa, my request to you is, would you please respond to me yourself (and let me know how I may reach you without hearing back from Santosh instead)? I promise not to hound you with emails -- I will send only an occasional inquiry about status if I don't hear from you for awhile.



Thanks!

Laurie *****



THE EMAIL CHAIN BEGINS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST




Hi Lisa,



Thank you so much for your email! I look forward to hearing what you find out.



Regards,

Laurie



-----------------------------------------------------------




Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 22:38:48 -0500

Subject: Unauthorized contacts appearing in my phone's contact list

LinkedIn Customer Support Message





Subject: Unauthorized contacts appearing in my phone's contact list



Thread

Response Via Email (Lisa)

03/13/2014 22:38

Hi Laurie,



Thank you for your email and I apologize for the delay in my response. Please note I've been assigned to your case. Please allow me some time to review and further investigate the issue you are describing. If I need further information from you in the meantime, I will let you know.



Regards,



Lisa

LinkedIn Trust & Safety







I sent an email to customer service a couple weeks ago about my concern that my LinkedIn contacts were showing up in my smartphone contacts list without my permission.



I had a very strange exchange with one of the customer service reps (Santosh) -- his emails didn't make sense (I couldn't tell if he was having trouble with English, or if he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing, or if he was having some other problem) and weren't responsive to my emails -- and he repeatedly

ignored my polite requests to have a supervisor get in touch with me.



Please read the email chain below. In my second email, I described the complaint that I filed with the FCC.



WOULD WHOEVER GETS THIS EMAIL PLEASE HAVE A SUPERVISOR EMAIL ME TO DISCUSS THIS ISSUE?? THANK YOU!!!!



Laurie *****





Member By Email (Laurie *****)

03/07/2014 07:06

PLEASE HAVE A SUPERVISOR EMAIL ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.



You know, it isn't going to make you look very good when I email this chain back without the ticket number attached so that someone else can get a good look at how you have repeatedly ignored this simple polite request:



PLEASE HAVE A SUPERVISOR EMAIL ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------






Thank you for patient and understand your concern. I'm forwarding this issue to our internal team and if needed the internal team supervisor would further answer with relevant information.



Regards,



Santosh

Customer Experience Advocate



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Member By Email (Laurie *****)

03/05/2014 22:20

I'm not expecting an immediate resolution. But I am requesting, for the third time now, that you put me in contact with a supervisor.



PLEASE HAVE A SUPERVISOR CONTACT ME!!



If my simple requests to you for contact with a supervisor continue to be ignored, I will resend this email chain back to customer service (not just back to you), in the expectation that someone else will be able to respond appropriately.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Response Via Email (Santosh)

03/05/2014 21:40

Hi Laurie,



I wish I had an immediate resolution for you. This particular issue will need to be escalated to our internal research team. I understand this may be frustrating but as soon as I get an update, I'll let you know.



Thanks for your patience in this matter, Laurie.



Regards,



Santosh

Customer Experience Advocate





Member By Email (Laurie *****)

03/04/2014 11:42

Santosh.



Your email baffles me.



I have no idea what you mean by "provide me with the member's names who connected to your network."



The issue is that LinkedIn has been adding my LinkedIn connections to my smartphone's contacts without my permission.



Are you seriously asking me to go through all1500+ of my phone contacts and make out a list of all the names that were added by LinkedIn rather than by me?? I can't even see what use that would be. Exactly what would you have your team do with

that information? This is not an issue about actions taken by LinkedIn members.



No offense intended, but for whatever reason, you seem not to understand the nature of the problem and therefore are unable to troubleshoot it effectively.



Once again, I ask you: PLEASE PUT ME IN CONTACT WITH A SUPERVISOR!!!



Laurie *****



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



On March 3, 2014 9:46:58 PM CST, LinkedIn Customer Support wrote:

Response Via Email (Santosh)

03/03/2014 21:46

Hi Laurie,



Thank you for your reply and apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. I would surely forward this issue to my internal team for further assistance, however I would request you to provide me with the member's names who connected to your network, so that I can check the status and assist you further.



Regards,



Santosh

Customer Experience Advocate



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Member By Email (Laurie *****)

02/28/2014 13:40

As I explained in my last email, sync *IS* completely off AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. You seem to have some trouble understanding my emails. Please put me in touch with a supervisor.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



On February 27, 2014 11:15:07 PM CST, LinkedIn Customer Support wrote:

Response Via Email (Santosh)

02/27/2014 23:15

Hi Laurie,



Thank you for your reply and apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. Let me provide with the steps.



Go to your Andriod phone settings, scroll down to personal -> accounts &sync.

Turn off the Sync completely.



Laurie, hope the provided steps would serve your needs and if you have further questions, please feel free to reply to this message.



Santosh

Customer Experience Advocate



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Member By Email (Laurie *****)

02/27/2014 08:50

Santosh / Rajesh / Whoever gets this email next . . .



First, I think that Santosh meant "LinkedIn" not "DroidIn" in his email below -- I assume you are referring to the LinkedIn app that is installed on my phone.



So I went into my LinkedIn account under ACCOUNTS. It shows me that for both Contacts and LinkedIn data, Sync is OFF.



LinkedIn has obtained unauthorized access to my Contacts, and I want to know how this happened and how to stop it.



Please escalate this case to someone with

substantial knowledge on the subject. I am disturbed that despite my having taken explicit measures NOT to give LinkedIn access to my smartphone contacts, it has apparently happened anyhow. I wish to file a formal complaint about this with LinkedIn -- please advise on how to do so.



Independently of my formal complaint to LinkedIn, I have filed the following complaint with the FCC



"I have an account on LinkedIn.com. Like all LinkedIn users, I regularly connect to other users; they become my connections. I recently discovered that my LinkedIn connections have become contacts on my smartphone. I have always had my LinkedIn sync options set to OFF and have explicitly refused several requests from LinkedIn to access my smartphone contacts. Nonetheless, it appears that LinkedIn has disregarded my wishes and settings and has not only read my contacts (read access) but has also WRITTEN TO my contacts (write access) -- all in violation of my

clearly expressed wishes and properly configured settings."



Laurie *****





Response Via Email (Santosh)

02/27/2014 03:06

Hi Laurie,



Thanks for reaching out to us about this and apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.



You can always remove Droidin account from phone->settings->Accounts & sync. When you install Droidin it gives you 3 options: full sync, partial (existing contacts only) and none. If you turn off this sync feature, it would not import your contacts and add them.



Laurie, if there's anything else I can do to make your experience the best possible please let me know.



Santosh

Customer Experience Advocate



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Response Via Email (Rajesh)

02/27/2014 02:44

Hi Laurie,



I'm sorry for not having a quick answer. I have forwarded your message for additional review and advice. We�ll be in contact with you as quickly as possible but your issue may require additional research which may extend your wait time.



You can always check the status of your ticket by moving your cursor over "More" at the top of the LinkedIn homepage and then selecting "Help Center". From there, click "Support History" in the top left to see the status of any tickets you've submitted.



Thanks for your patience, Laurie.

Regards,



Rajesh

Customer Experience Advocate





Auto-Response

02/26/2014 19:58

Thanks for contacting us. Someone from our support team will get back to you as soon as possible.



If you can sign in to your LinkedIn account, you can check the status of your submitted tickets any time in the Support History section of our Help Center.



Regards,



Your LinkedIn Customer Experience Team






Member By Web Form (Laurie *****)

02/26/2014 19:58

I just discovered that every time I connect with someone, that person gets added to the contacts list on my phone. I never authorized this and do not want it to happen - - and no, I never gave LinkedIn permission to access my contacts. Unless I unknowingly gave that permission by installing the Android app. If so, I will uninstall it immediately. Please explain why this happens and how to make it stop - - and it would be nice if there was a quick way to get rid of all the unwanted entries, but I guess I'll have to delete all my contacts and re-export them. Unless the rogue contacts have infiltrated my other device's contact lists as well - and if that is the case, I will take down my profile and leave a message directing people to come view my new profile at The Ladders. LinkedIn is not so essential to my life that I'm willing to let it add contacts to my phone without asking me.


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