I don't have a LinkedIn account, and I would probably reopen one if I heard that they stopped their incessant spam emails. I'm surprised that they haven't been sued to MySpace and back for those email policies, which almost certainly are illegal in the United States. (This based on my experience, which ended 2 or 3 years ago when, after months of failed attempts, I managed to close my account.)
iirc when you sign up, they sua sponte take all your contacts from [fb, Google, your phone, etc] and message all of them saying you have invited them to join LinkedIn. This is the scummy behavior I assume the poster is talking about.
I signed up with a fake name and throwaway email the other day and I couldn't believe the process. There were about 8 steps for entering more and more personal information and one of them was definitely allowing linked in access to my email account.
