[LINK] How does LinkedIn know my contacts?

[grove at zeta.org.au]

Hi,
I am quite a n00b when it comes to social networking surprisingly 
enough.  I am very active on Twitter for various purposes,
do not use Facebook at all, but have been doing a bit within 
LinkedIn, updating my Profile and preparing it for job search etc.

In general, I have only ever used LinkedIn for work related or business
contacts.  I have never directed any of the information towards
personal connections and so on.

But now, twice within a couple of weeks, I have seen LinkedIn offer me 
connections to people I have only dealt with peripherally, on a private 
basis.

One was with an art dealer whom I purchased a painting from on eBay.
The second was with a US academic who wrote a book I purchased last
year.

In both cases, I never referred to these people on LinkedIn or any 
other place except via email, ebay and a forum I found the book on originally.

Now LinkedIn presented these contacts as "People you might know"
but actually put them on the top of the list.

How is it doing this?  I have never given LinkedIn a direct link 
(that I know of) to my email contacts or used it anywhere except to login once 
or twice to TheConversation.edu.au for example.

I find it so surprising that LinkedIn is offering me these particular 
contacts given they have nothing to do with each other, or my 
personal data.

I know something is different because I get offered legitimate contacts
such as "so and so would like you to link with them" which I have 
done in the past.

But this offering of people I have dealt with beyond the knowledge of
what I permit LinkedIn to do is troubling, because I do not 
understand it.....


rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
 	The more an answer costs, the more respect it carries.