LinkedIn has shut down Intro, a mobile service for connecting people via email, following security concerns.
LinkedIn launched Intro last October as part of a broader push to become the “leading mobile company.” The service was created for the iPhone and was designed to collect information from a user’s LinkedIn profile and then insert it into emails received on phones. The service displays that information to the recipient from the email sender, if the sender has a LinkedIn.
Intro was intended to add a more professional profile to email and attract more users to LinkedIn. But it quickly sparked questions from security experts, who are concerned about the way the email service was routed through LinkedIn servers. Security consulting firm Bishop Fox said the service was essentially vulnerable to a “man-in-the-middle attack” and that it was only a matter of time before someone used it to launch a phishing attack.
