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Comment by Beestie | Hacker News Reader

I rather suspect the information was siphoned to linkedin from the payroll company the consulting firm was using. While there are a zillion small consulting firms, there are a small number of firms which process their payroll (whether to employees or independent contractors like myself). I have no evidence to back this up but after thinking it through, it made more sense than every little mom/pop/medium size niche company all cooperating with linkedin vs a hand full of mega payroll consolidators selling aggregated lists to linkedin. Again, speculation on my part.

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That is extremely disturbing to hear!

What is the benefit that the company derives from that? Kickbacks from LinkedIn? I'm not saying it is, or isn't, I don't understand what the benefit to be gotten from it is. It seems like a lot of effort by one party or the other, unless it is "baked in" to an MS account or whatever.

Also, as the person above had asked: did you have any option/ability to "take control" of the account, or did it have to go through the consulting company was using? It almost feels like someone had a fake ID card made for you. Not a drivers license, but something that would be of greater concern to the person on the ID (LinkedIn profile) than the company making it.

Interesting. That's a possibility... but how much information did the LinkedIn account have? Did it have your full job title? I'm not sure how much information is shared with payroll providers.

Again, there's no real reporting on the internet of LinkedIn creating profiles for people without their consent. If you have any documentation and details, this is the kind of thing worth posting here in full detail and/or contacting a journalist about. Of course, if it was in the past you might not have any of that info anymore.

It reminds me of that thing I had heard of people doing on Facebook years ago. Someone wouldn't have a Facebook account "yet", so one of their friends/family/whomever would create one on their behalf with an assumption that they were being helpful to the other party. "It's all ready to go once you want to login! I knew your email address, so just do a password reset when you start using it. You're welcome!"

I believe even an episode of South Park covered it.

The difference there being that, with the Facebook relationship status stuff, spouses were feeling societal pressure to show a public declaration and "proof" of their partners existence/mutual status. With something like LinkedIn though...does that same sort of pressure exist? Are Hiring Managers (or whomever) feeling some kind of professional pressure to "prove" how many real life people work with/for their company? Does getting the number of users marked as working for that company above a threshold give them secret, special privileges in some locked-off business area of LinkedIn? Or is it just pure clout chasing? It's very odd. It feels like a violation in some way I can't really articulate. "Compulsory volunteer account-to-ID association"? I don't know what to call that. It's gross.

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