After four long months, LinkedIn is finally pulling the plug on its controversial "Intro" email app for iOS in March of this year. The app was launched with the idea to deepen LinkedIn in a professional atmosphere, but it failed to do so and only brought about several issues.
The main reason for the uproar was because the app integrated LinkedIn user's contact details right into the iOS Mail app, which was a huge cause for security concerns as LinkedIn had to scan every email that comes through, even ones that are unrelated to the social network.
In a blog post back in October of 2013, security firm Bishop Fox described LinkedIn's Intro feature as a "dream for attackers," a viewpoint that was shared by Richard Bejtlich, a researcher for Mandiant, who was interviewed by the New York Times.
"I don't think people who use this are seriously thinking about the implication of LinkedIn seeing and changing their email," Bejtlich tells the New York Times. "It just completely breaks the idea that email traffic is going where it should go and no place else."
Users who are unwilling to wait until March 7, which is the official shutdown date for Intro, can uninstall it from their iOS device and save themselves the trouble.
"While Intro is going away, we will continue to work on bringing the power of LinkedIn to wherever our members work," said Deep Nishar, LinkedIn senior vice president of products and user experience, in a blog post. "Email, where the average professional spends more than a quarter of their time, is one of those places, so we'll continue to look for ways to bring this kind of functionality to our members through existing partnerships. Users of Intro will be able to uninstall it between now and March 7 and switch back to their previous mail accounts."
As it appears, LinkedIn may very well try a different method to integrate LinkedIn with user's email accounts. However, we believe the professional social network should forget such ambitious plans and focus on other things. There will always be security concerns when doing something like this, and even if they are minor, users will no doubt always feel uneasy about it.
