A LinkedIn account has become one of the "must haves" of the professional world and after hitting 200 million users last year, their success seems to be unstoppable. So what exactly has got them so worked up?
A browser extension called Sell Hack which is available for Firefox, Safari and Chrome allows you to uncover a user's e-mail address, regardless of whether or not you are connected to him/her. The tool was supposedly created for marketing professionals, however in reality that professional could simply use LinkedIn paid version. Sell Hack have said that they aren't doing anything illegal, instead they insist that they are simply the ones doing the heavy lifting so that you don't have to.
LinkedIn don't seem to be seeing things that way, making sure that they do everything in their power to shut down Sell Hack:
"We are doing everything we can to shut Sell Hack down. On 31 March LinkedIn's legal team delivered Sell Hack a cease-and-desist letter as a result of several violations"
LinkedIn have insisted that all members who have download the Sell Hack, should immediately uninstall the extension as well as send a request to the developers asking them to remove their data. The same spokesman also advised to use caution when downloading any third party apps- what kind of spokesman would he be if he didn't, right?
Sell Hack said that they have disabled the plug-in with the idea of developing a different extension that is compliant with LinkedIn's terms of service, though two days later the tool seems to still be available for download.
Source: BBC | Image via sellhack.com
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