Yup, so not only is this article preachy and boring (seriously, how many "I'm quitting $socialnetwork and you should too" posts do we need?), but it's also factually wrong.

Even if the from address was that of the user who sent the message, it's kind of hard to ignore the huge LinkedIn branding the message resides in. You'd have to be a fool to miss it, because I'm pretty sure even a blind person's screen reader would pick up on this.

It's not about fooling the human, it's about giving the spam filter a hard time.

LinkedIn emails get through spam filters because they have properly configured email auth like SPF and DKIM, LinkedIn accounts are double-opt-in, and because LinkedIn works closely with major email providers like Google and Microsoft.

I feel like there should be a button for people who don't have accounts to say, "I don't want to make an account and I don't want any more email from LinkedIn."

Would be nice if Gmail's "Spam" button actually blocked future emails from that same person indefinitely!

Sometimes they get around filters by sending from different emails, that's really annoying. I should probably quit Gmail and go back to Cerberus which has awesome filtering!

I too was looking for that button, and the best that I could find was drumroll to create a LinkedIn account and change my preferences. :/

For the end user that isn't a member, they seem to not want to let you opt out of their emails.

That wouldn't prevent them to build a social network around you, just like Facebook does ("ghost profiles" or whatever they are called these days). Those emails are just spam.

Agreed. What linked-in does is absolutely the correct behavior. When someone uses linked-in to send me an email, my response should go directly to the user. This takes Linked-in out of the loop of the conversation, which is perfect.

Other networks (I'm looking at you, Facebook), instead trap you in using their interfaces to communicate with someone.

I think Linked-in is actually really protecting privacy in this respect.

Also, if the user grants you permission, you can see their email address within linked-in and avoid sending any communication through linked-in itself.

The reply-to being from the user is super useful. It means I can talk to someone who wants to connect without having to go back to LinkedIn. It's good UX design.

Yep. I just checked my mail and saw the same thing. Though my oldest invitations seem to be from the user themselves. Seems they changed it in 2010 to @linkedin.com.

Thank you for pointing this out, I checked, and I've gotten emails routed through user emails as recently as 2012, but it does look like they're generally moving away from that. I made a longer comment to that effect below.

http://imgur.com/gallery/fapPDhZ/new