LinkedIn is an important online tool for professional networking and maintaining a handy and attractive online curriculum vitae (mine is at http://kb2.org/eigencv), but one of its strengths (that so many people use it) is also directly related to one of its weaknesses (that it helps you inundate your contacts with repeated spam). Below are some tips for recipients and senders of LinkedIn spam that helped me.
First the background
I receive many emails on a regular basis like the one below from my contacts via both my Kabissa and gmail mailboxes, which I appreciate and follow up on to “link in” with my friends and contacts.
However, I do not appreciate the dozens more that are sent to the Kabissa role mailboxes for volunteering, editors, community, info etc. These get alot more mail generally and are handled by numerous volunteers who might or might not be using LinkedIn personally already and not necessarily on behalf of Kabissa. We don’t have a policy for handling LinkedIn contact requests except to delete them unanswered.
I know Kabissa is not the only organization facing this issue, and of course LinkedIn is not the only networking site that helps its users send email to their email contacts. But LinkedIn doesn’t make it particularly easy to block spam or avoid the mistake of spamming your friends.
As you will see in my screenshot above, there is no link at the bottom to unsubscribe or opt out of LinkedIn mailings – is that even legal?
Tip for the annoyed LinkedIn spammee: Add Your Email to LinkedIn’s Do Not Contact List
I didn’t know this myself, but LinkedIn apparently has a Do Not Contact List. If you don’t ever want to hear from anybody via LinkedIn, you can request to have your email address added to the list by writing to cs@linkedin.com or by completing the form at https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask/path/dnca.
If this works for you let me know. (Source: LinkedIn Help Center)
Tip for the well-intentioned LinkedIn spammer: Withdraw invitations that have not been answered
I know you mean well and don’t intend to annoy your contacts with LinkedIn spam. The fact is, LinkedIn makes it really easy and fun to contact your friends via LinkedIn to join and connect with you, either individually by typing in an email address or through a mass action by connecting to your own email addressbook and inviting everyone you have ever corresponded with. This is great for quickly getting the benefits out of LinkedIn, but it is very annoying for those contacts of yours that haven’t heard from you in a while and may not even remember who you are or care to link in with you, or who don’t use LinkedIn.
You probably don’t know this, but to make matters worse, LinkedIn will continue to send follow up messages to the contacts that ignore your requests. The only way to stop this from happening (say if a friend emails you to complain) is to log into LinkedIn and delete the request. How to do this is not immediately apparent and the interface does not provide a way to mass withdraw all of your invitation requests – you have to delete each request individually. Here’s how to do it:
1. Click on “Inbox” (found in the top navigation bar of the home page).
2. Click on the “Trash” tab on the left side
3. Click on the subject line of the Invitation you wish to withdraw from the list of messages shown. This will allow you to see the Message detail.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Withdraw” button. If the option to withdraw is not present, then this Invitation cannot be withdrawn. (It may have already expired.)
No notification message will be sent to this member. You can create another Invitation to the member once three days have passed since your last Invitation.
You can also apparently contact LinkedIn customer service at http://help.linkedin.com/app/ask or cs@linkedin.com and ask them to withdraw all sent invitations. (source: LinkedIn support forum)
Let me know if this works for you or if you have other insights. Thanks!
I just opened my email and saw my first non-text Google Ad – see screenshot. One of the things I always liked about Google for email is that even though I’m exchanging free for looking at ads, the ads were always unobtrusive text-based ads. It looks like Google is making some pretty major adjustments to our email experience right now alongside its 
