Dear Everybody with whom I've ever communicated by email on the Internet. I am an asshole. Though you probably received an email purportedly from me exhorting you to check out my profile on LinkedIn, I did not send it. When I have received similar letters in the past, I've deleted them, and scoffed at the sender.
Please do NOT check out my profile on LinkedIn. I don't want you to see it. In fact, by the time you read this it will probably be gone.
Phones in pockets can do all sorts of funny things. I've pocket dialed people before. Everybody has. But I've never pocket emailed thousands of people before. That could only happen with an app written by a company with a complete lack of responsibility when it comes to personal data.
Which brings me to...
Dear LinkedIn. I am not what you call a fan of social-media. I quit Facebook long ago and I have only a passing acquaintance with Twitter. And so it was with great reluctance that I recently joined LinkedIn at the urging of people in business I trust.
And when you offered to look through my address book to connect me to people I know, I hesitated. But I let you do it, and you helped me get reconnected with a small select group of people. A small network free of recruiters, and social media professionals, and ex-girlfriends.
But giving you access to those email addresses was like leaving a loaded gun under my pillow. With the safety off. Because somehow---and I'll probably never know how---the Android LinkedIn app emailed everybody I've ever communicated with. From inside my pocket.
This is not my fault. It's 2014, and the era where collecting your customers' address books to spam their friends and colleagues with transparent ads for your service is long over.
On second thought, I'm not your customer. I've never paid you a cent. I've heard it said that "makes me the product." Indeed, I've never felt more taken advantage of by an online service.
And so though it was with great reluctance that I joined LinkedIn, it is now with great enthusiasm that I quit. Your community of recruiters, social-media professionals, and spammers is better off without me.
Sincerely,
Eric Gradman Co-founder & Mad Inventor Two Bit Circus