LinkedIn cuts off email address exports with new privacy setting

A win for privacy on LinkedIn could be a big loss for businesses, recruiters and anyone else expecting to be able to export the email addresses of their connections.

LinkedIn just quietly introduced a new privacy setting that defaults to blocking other users from exporting your email address.
That could prevent some spam, and protect users who didn’t realize anyone who they’re connected tocould download their email address into a giant spreadsheet.But the launch of this new setting without warning or even a formal announcement could piss off users who’d invested tons of time into the professional networking site in hopes of contacting their connections outside of it.

TechCrunch was tipped off by a reader that emails were no longer coming through as part of LinkedIn’s Archive tool for exporting your data. Now LinkedIn confirms to TechCrunch that “This is a new setting that gives our members even more control of their email address on LinkedIn.If you take a look at the setting titled ‘Who can download your email’, you’ll see we’ve added a more detailed setting that defaults to the strongest privacy option.

This “Allow your connections to download your email in their data export?” toggle defaults to “No.” Most users don’t know it exists because LinkedIn didn’t announce it; there’s merely been a folded up section added to the Help centeron email visibility, and few might voluntarily change it to “Yes” as there’s no explanation of why you’d want to. Your connections will still be able to see your email address if they navigate to your profile, but they can’t grab those from their whole graph.

But trying to hide a change that’s massively impactful to businesses that rely on LinkedIn could erode the trust of its core users.

Original article