I always set my LinkedIn at the max privacy. I deleted my LinkedIn account over 8 months ago. I still get spam from recruiters in my email that uses my LinkedIn name which is different than my real name. LinkedIn definitely does not follow privacy settings.
Also lots of companies are mining data from Linkedin and building email databases.
As soon as Linkedin knows I switched companies I start receiving a deluge of spam on "guessed" emails (first_name@company.com, first_name.last_name@company.com).
