Did LinkedIn started selling user emails last month?

Question

I've noticed in the past few weeks, I started getting automated emails from random job platforms and recruiters like "We've noticed your profile on LinkedIn and registered you on our (competing) website etc...".What makes these odd is that the email is sent straight to my personal email. It's not going through LinkedIn to a random generated email like it used to.However the personal email is not part of the public profile, they shouldn't have been able to scrape it in the first place.That leaves only two explanations. Either LinkedIn started selling user personal emails away or company found a way to get private info from profiles?

wjossey · Accepted Answer

I advertise a lot on LinkedIn- they aren’t selling your email address (at least not that I’ve seen).
It wouldn’t be in their financial interest to do so. Their goal is to get you to do outreach on their platform, which requires use of credits (which aren’t cheap). Giving away emails would undercut their entire business model.
So, safe to say it’s some other way they are getting your address.

kpwags · Answer

I noticed I got one the other day. It was an aliased email tied only to LinkedIn.I was wondering the same thing, especially since I've since changed the email since the 2012 breach.

rapfaria · Answer

Or the recruiter came to your profile, saw your last position and tried contacting you at name@company.com. It's been happening to me a lot since November, when I switched jobs and got an email address just like this.

recrudesce · Answer

Or your email address is in another mailing list that was sold by another company.That or you're still using the same email address that was disclosed in the 2012 data breach that LinkedIn suffered... which is easily obtainable.

Joe-CFOHub · Answer

Have you tried hunter.io and seeing if your email can be scraped with tools like that?

Did LinkedIn started selling user emails last month?

I noticed I got one the other day. It was an aliased email tied only to LinkedIn.
I was wondering the same thing, especially since I've since changed the email since the 2012 breach.

Or the recruiter came to your profile, saw your last position and tried contacting you at name@company.com. It's been happening to me a lot since November, when I switched jobs and got an email address just like this.

Or your email address is in another mailing list that was sold by another company.
That or you're still using the same email address that was disclosed in the 2012 data breach that LinkedIn suffered... which is easily obtainable.

Have you tried hunter.io and seeing if your email can be scraped with tools like that?