[conspire] Join my network on LinkedIn

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Don Marti (dmarti at zgp.org):

> It is possible to use LinkedIn responsibly, if you
> treat it as a tool for letting other people who have
> already chosen to use LinkedIn help you keep your
> contact info on them up to date.

I'll take your word for that.  However, my reaction is to LinkedIn
itself -- specifically, to the aspects of it that impinge in my life.
Even if the people who use LinkedIn's CGI to lob "invitations" at people
made sure they're interested first, the contents and delivery regimen of
LinkedIn's form e-letters would still creep me out.

o  Those form-mails are written in a crypto-personal prose style, and then
   sent out with forged headers making them purport to be directly from
   the member's personal, non-LinkedIn mailing address to me.  I have
   no reason to think the ostensible sender was even shown the text
   he would be "sending" to me, let alone allowed to customise it,
   so the member probably has no idea how manipulatively worded the
   messages are.  It's just subtle enough that you get maybe a
   paragraph or two in, before realising the authorial "voice" is 
   just slightly askew -- and then you check the Received headers and
   figure out that the main headers were forged, and it's not from your
   friend at all.

o  The mails get _repeated_.  You ignore the first one, and maybe even
   double-check with your friend and verify that he/she didn't write 
   that message, and you think you're done.  Sorry, no; there are 
   follow-up, equally faux-personal messages urging you not to miss
   this opportunity.

I get quite a lot of Web 2.0-site advertising mails.  These are the only
ones that seems actively creepy.