Why does LinkedIn think it's OK to trick me into spamming my entire Gmail address book?

That IS awfully poor (and probably evil) design.

What does the "Don't Invite Folks" button look like? (There is one right?)

The big blue "Invited selected contacts" button sure makes you want to press it!

Also - this illustrates how using e-mail addresses as a proxy for user's identity (as opposed to say an open-id) is just all sorts of evil. Your intention to find other linked-in users who are also your contacts would not couldn't have gone so terribly awry if your friend list was just a bunch of identifiers.

yeah, i have to echo lane's sentiment. why does it feel like every time i use linkedin, it's a game of cat-and-mouse to protect my friends from getting spammed?

also, now linkedin has stored my whole address book (by function of the pending invites). that invades my privacy.

Lane, thanks so much for bringing this to our attention. We've been experiementing with some changes to our import feature recently and it looks like we've introduced some bugs.

The Select All box should work as one would expect and when unchecked should absolutely remove all of the names in the right hand box.

We'll get this fixed ASAP.

As a quick follow-up to Steve's comment, we are definitely looking at redesigning this flow in the near future. There is a lot of potential improvement here from a usability standpoint.

Thank you very much for posting this feedback.

Adam

Yes, awesome to see such prompt responsiveness!

Well, now I just feel like a jerk. :)

Steve and Adam, thanks for being so responsive to my issue. First off, let me apologize for overreacting. As one of the people responsible for creating this here system we're all using right now -- and having been also responsible in my time for creating any number of complex user interfaces -- you'd think I would know better than to fly off the handle when something like this happens, or to assign blame in a situation that was more accidental than intentional. I just got caught up in the moment.

I recognize it wasn't a conscious decision on your part to send all those messages, and my calling it "spam" was unfair and misleading. Unfortunately, one of the effects of sending out all those messages to old email addresses in my contacts is that it put me awkwardly back in touch with someone I would have preferred not to have contacted in that manner. My frustration and venting stemmed almost entirely from having to deal with that -- one of those situations where algorithmic decisions slam up against awkward, tricky human issues.

Again, I really appreciate the prompt response, and I promise to be less of an ass in my future postings (here and elsewhere in Get Satisfaction; now would be a good time for me to revisit point 5 of our Company-Customer Pact.) I genuinely love the LinkedIn service -- your business and growth model is one we hugely admire and cite most often as something to emulate here at Get Satisfaction -- and I plan to keep using it for years to come.

yes! i have the same problem too - it's really frustrating and embarrassing. i wonder if there is any way to undo the mess i'm now in. ugh.

Lane, no apology necessary. We appreciate the feedback regardless of what is fueling it.

We'll be rolling out an interim fix for this issue tomorrow evening and, as Adam mentioned, we'll be taking a holistic look at our import process with an eye on improving overall usability.

well, it's going to take a long time to withdraw 240 invitations :( is there a way to bulk withdraw?

By withdrawing invitations-- does it remove the actual email that is sent out to my contacts? this is my main concern

Invitation emails are sent fairly quickly so it's likely that they will be received by your contacts.

Well it just happend to me, so it does not look like linkedIn has fixed anything over the past 3 months. Also, when I try to withdraw an invite, the screen freezes and goews grey and I never get the chance to confirm, so I am not sure whether the invite has been withdrawn or not. I have reported this to LinkedIn via their website, but have just got an acknowledgement, not a solution. Is Steve still out there and can you help?

Ace, thanks for getting in touch. I've confirmed that your invitations have been withdrawn. If there were any outstanding that you actually wanted to issue, you will need to send them again.

Thanks also for reporting this new bug. I hope to have it fixed by the end of this week.

Many thanks for this Steve. Outstanding support!! Much appreciated.

Well done Linked In

I’ve exact the same problem. I’ve joined linked and wanted to connect to the my relations how already had linked In. I was already aware of the spam problems from linked in because a friend had the problem. He mailed his entire address book. I didn’t want that to happen so was very carefully... I loaded my contacts from gmail and selected the friends with linked in. Ik clicked “invite selected contacts” and the site didn’t do anything so I clicked again. What happened? Linked in had selected ALL MY CONTACTS again end send them an invitation. I didn’t get a warning at all (wouldn’t be so strange if you are about to mail a few hundred people!). The people include instructors from my university, colleague and people I don’t know any more or want to know any more. I was really devastated.

After this I wanted to remove them from the list, but I couldn’t see how. Inviting was so easy, getting rid of it impossible. They all got a reminder and after that a warning that my invitation was about to expire! After the lost one I’ve got a lot of reactions from people asking why they are getting the annoying mails. I looked on google and saw this topic. So you can withdrawn them!! And how? I couldn’t find it the first time (and in general a’m very familiar with computers) and after finding it you have to do it one by one! And here you get your warning.. are you sure to withdrawn this invitation?? You should have give me the warning when I was about to send the invitations.

You want to be a professional networking website?? Act like it!