The people suing LinkedIn don't understand

Update October 4, 2015: If you added a LinkedIn connection between September 17, 2011 and October 31, 2014, you should have received an email titled "LEGAL NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION." The deadline to submit a claim for this class-action lawsuit is December 14, 2015. I'm not authorized to include any more information about this; if you feel you should have received the legal notice and didn't, please contact LinkedIn directly.

An interesting note on the post below: LinkedIn is still asking me to connect to people using email addresses that were discontinued over 10 years ago. This shows you that, once an email address is in LinkedIn's system, they will retain it forever. I will be looking for a feature to remove all the stale email addresses and upload new ones.

Note September 15, 2014: There is new information about LinkedIn. This post needs to be replaced. Stay tuned. Brian Krebs describes a possible hack of LinkedIn, "LinkedIn Feature Exposes Email Addresses."

Original post:
According to an article in The Verge, LinkedIn has been accused of hacking users' email accounts. I think I know what's going on and why the plaintiffs don't understand what's happening.

Let's look at two people: a fictional John Doe (john.doe@example.com) and me (bruce.hobbs@gmail.com). John Doe is one of the plaintiffs in the the lawsuit; he claims his email account was hacked. Not at all. Here's what I think happened:

1. When I signed up with LinkedIn, I gave them one-time access to my Gmail contacts. I did this by changing my Gmail password, letting LinkedIn harvest my contacts, then changed my Gmail password again. This guaranteed that LinkedIn only had one-time access to my email contacts.

2. Let's say John Doe was in my contact list under john.doe@example.com. At that time, John Doe was not a member of LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn't contact him, it just files his email address away linked to my email address. I gave LinkedIn permission to do this.

3. Several years pass and John Doe joins LinkedIn using the email address john.doe@example.com. Guess what? LinkedIn goes through their database and sees the connection between John Doe and me. So I get an email message saying that John Doe has joined LinkedIn. Would I like to send him a connection request?

4. John hears about this and thinks, "Oh my God, they've hacked my email account!" I think it's exactly the other way around: John's friends gave LinkedIn his address and there was no hacking involved.

Is there validity in the lawsuit? I'm not an attorney but I don't think so. I might suggest that LinkedIn only keep the email addresses they receive (see step 1) that don't match current LinkedIn subscribers for a year and then discard them.

Update June 6, 2014: LinkedIn filed a motion in December to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the new user (John Doe in my example) consented to sending invitation requests to other members of LinkedIn. Click here for the Bloomberg story.

The new Gmail Inbox: I like it

I like the new Gmail Inbox with tabs, which I got yesterday. I'm training it as there are some things that are showing up under the wrong tab. But for the most part, the default classification is good. Here is a screen shot of the top of my Inbox*:

My understanding is that "Primary" is the default tab for any conversations (groups of messages) not showing up under the other tabs.

"Social" are messages connected with social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and blogs I've subscribed to, etc.

"Promotions" are messages that have an advertising flavor to them. Promotions are not spam as that goes into the spam filter. A sample message is like the one I got from Toyota today, "Bruce, Get a First Look at the All-New Corolla."

"Updates" are more newsy items from companies that I have a relationship with. A typical entry is from Fidelity Investments, "Tax-smart investing tips."

As I mentioned, I'm training it. For example, the two messages from Cincinnati.com showing in image showed up under "Updates" and I want news like this to be under "Primary." To move them, I selected them with a check in the box at the left then right-clicked (left-clicked for left handers) on the message and selected "Move to Tab ➜" then "Primary". I got a confirmation message that the message had been moved and this:
"Do this for future messages from newsletters@e.cincinnati.com? Yes".

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* Yes, I have 14,435 messages in my Inbox of which 4,868 are unread. Google said when I signed up that I don't have to delete messages any more and I listened to them. I recently searched for and used a message I wrote in 2008.

Earlier this week, I passed a milestone that I like: I have now reached over 1,000 page views on this blog. Someone out there is reading my stuff.

iOS 7 or iPhone 6: Improvements that I would like to see

Apple Computer is going to release iOS 7 for the iPhone and iPad this fall. They are also expected to release a new iPhone this fall (either a 5S or 6). I currently am using an iPhone 4S running iOS 6. Here are some improvements that I would like to see in the new operating system and/or phone:

• The date on the Calendar app changes every day. I want the Weather app to show the correct current temperature (now it always shows 73º) and the Clock app to show the correct local time (now it always shows 10:15). I understand that changing the Weather and Clock apps could use up the battery faster but I'm confident that Apple can figure out how to accomplish this without wasting battery power (mostly by not updating when I can't see the display).
• I want to select the default browser (I prefer Chrome to Safari) and the default maps (Google Maps is still more accurate than Apple's Maps app).
• Many apps (such as Facebook and LinkedIn) include a browser within the app. When you're done with a page in the browser, you tap the back arrow at the top of the screen to go back to the app. Others (sorry, I can't come up with an example) use Safari to display web pages. However, in Safari, there is no back arrow to go back to the app; you have to leave Safari and try to remember which app you were in. The link to Safari should have a back arrow to take you back to the app.
• Speaking of back arrows, why is Safari's at the bottom of the screen instead of the top like every other app?
• Here's one that has to be fixed in hardware: There are two speakers at the bottom of the phone. That's great for portrait mode, but when I rotate the phone to look at a video in landscape mode, the way it was designed to be seen, all of the sound comes out of the left side. There needs to be one or two speakers on the top as well (the second added speaker is for people who rotate the other way).
• When I go into a restaurant with free Internet through wi-fi my phone connects to it with a minimum amount of hassle. So far, so good. Sometimes, the wi-fi is dog slow and I can't do anything with it. Currently, I have to turn the wi-fi off so I can get the faster speed of 3G (yes, it does happen that 3G is faster). I want the phone to select the faster of wi-fi or 3G (4G for later models) for my connection in this situation.
• I would like two improvements to the Contacts list in the Phone app: The ability to rearrange the sequence of phone numbers in a contact and the ability to display the company name in place of the phone number type. For example, if I look at my recent calls, I see that Sam at "work" called me recently. I would prefer that the entry say Sam at Acme Staffing Service (not the real company) instead. I usually don't care what number within the contact he used to call me.

That's all the changes I want today. Let's see how many of these get fixed in the next release of software and hardware.

Updated July 21 to fix grammar and formatting.

Spam on LinkedIn has dropped dramatically

In September, spam on the LinkedIn groups that I subscribe to showed up at least once a day. I dropped some groups and sent a message to LinkedIn that they needed to help the group owners deal with spam. For whatever reason, spam in October on LinkedIn has dropped dramatically. I kept a log in October and I only saw five spam messages.

In November, I'm going to subscribe again to all the IBM i (also known as System i, iSeries and AS/400) groups that I can find and review them for this blog, including how much spam they have.

Senior System Analyst wants to become a consultant

A LinkedIn user wonders about converting from a full-time employee to a independent contractor and is not sure about the billing rate he should use. He also wants to know about taxes and insurance. Here is my response:

My rule of thumb is that your starting hourly rate is your annual salary divided by 1,000. For example, if your annual salary is $80,000 then your hourly consulting rate would be $80 per hour to be equivalent. The big catch are the middlemen and they may bill you out at a rate they set and then pay you 50% to 90% of the proceeds. Note that many companies try to pay you less as a contractor than the equivalent employee would make. You shouldn't let yourself get suckered into this. However, you may have to take a pay cut to get established.

You will need to figure the taxes, insurance, etc. yourself or with your accountant. If you can't do this, you should not go out on your own. Many contractors are covered by their spouse's insurance because health insurance by itself can run $750 to $1,000 per month. But consider that, beginning in 2014, you may need to either provide your own insurance through your company or pay a penalty under the Affordable Care Act.

You should definitely line up an accountant before you go out on your own, not after. The accountant (I recommend a certified public accountant [CPA]) will help you decide the form of your business (C corporation, S corporation, LLC, etc.). Note that many companies will not contract with you unless you are a corporation or LLC this will help protect them from an IRS determination that you are an employee. The important thing is to this part correctly up front and not to wait until April 14 to think about this.

One of the requirements to be an independent contractor is that you pay yourself a salary and file all of the various employment tax returns required. In Ohio, you must keep track of your pay by municipality and file city and possibly school district tax returns for every city that you work in. Currently, I am filing in four cities and one Indiana county. My rule of thumb for your salary is about 50% of net billings.

With any client, you should offer to provide your own computer, typically a laptop. Having your own tools separates the independent contractors from the employees. The client may prefer you use their computer but at least you made the offer. Many times, I set up a separate virtual machine on my laptop for a client with their settings and policies.

Finally, get a copy of the "20 factors" and read them. The technical term for this is IRS Revenue Ruling 87-41 but this has been updated since then and it's not clear that the IRS even uses them in that form. The point here is that if your client is requiring you to be at work at a specific time and leave at a specific time, you may be considered an employee and not a contractor.

You may think that I'm trying to dissuade you from going out on your own. Au contraire. Although many contractors in the computer business have left due to the recession, some contractors have more job security than the people on staff. I was at a company once and heard that the staff was being cut by 10%. I went to my contact and said I felt bad that I was being kept on while others were being let go. He said, "You don't understand. They're paid out of the expense budget and you're paid out of the capital budget. There's a big difference." As it turned out, none of the IT people were laid off after all.

Let me know (through comments or direct email) if you have any questions.

How NOT to start an Internet business

On the LinkedIn group Linked Dayton (registration required) I saw this discussion: "New Consultant directory online at: www.Consultants.info. List for free!" Actually, this was the title; there really wasn't a discussion.

I was skeptical, so I checked it out. After entering some information, including selecting the United States of America from a list of every country in the world, I found no computer programmers listed for either Dayton or Cincinnati. My response to the group: "No computer programmers in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. This is crap."

I received a private message from the person who posted (name withheld to protect the guilty) explaining that I needed to register as a consultant. My response: "Sorry, you can't just start with an empty database and expect people to fill it for you. You need to buy some lists and launch it with data already in it. People will try it once and, if they don't get useful information, will never try it again. ..."

In addition to putting some data in the database, he needs to reduce the scope to the U.S.A. at a maximum and reduce the number of categories from over 200 to a more reasonable number.

I'm sorry if I come across as rude or arrogant, but I really am trying to help this poor guy get a clue. Yes, I am a fan of Shark Tank, especially Mark Cuban. How did you guess?