LinkedIn makes it too easy to leak contacts’ email addresses

Earlier this week my colleague Pablo Teijeira, who is based in our Madrid office, unintentionally shared the email addresses of some of his associates in the computer security field.

We all know how easy it can be to accidentally cc: a whole bunch of people rather than bcc: them, but in this case LinkedIn was at least partly to blame.

No great harm was done on this occasion, but Pablo was still upset that the incident had occurred.

So, why did it happen?

It turns out it’s because of a setting that LinkedIn uses when you share information with others on the business network, that you have to consciously opt-out from.

See there at the bottom?

(X) Allow recipients to see each other’s names and email addresses

It’s easy to overlook, as Pablo did, and when he tried to do a colleague a favour by…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.


Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

What do you think? Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.