Just discovered a bit more info about the change I wrote about last week at LinkedIn where e-mail addresses are no longer required for invitations.  In receiving yet another contact request today in email, I noticed this at the bottom of the message:

Following the link brought me to this page (click for larger image):

which shows the change.  The default is now “Notify me of all invitations” where as the previous behavior is better described by the second option “Only notify me of invitations from people who know my email address or appear in my ‘Other Contacts’ list“.    It would appear to me that LinkedIn has rolled out this change and in doing so changed everyone’s default to receive all invitations.  Which, realistically, is what I would expect them to do, given that they want to enable people to make more connections.  Loosen it up for everyone… and then let those of us who care go back in and restrict the setting.

Needless to say, I’ve changed my setting so that people need to know my address (which, gee, is not very hard to find (see the sidebar)).  As I just wrote in reply to Jeff Pulver’s “The ‘Obligations’ of Social Networking“, I only accept LinkedIn connection requests from people I know (and I figure that if they really want to connect, they either already know or can find my email address).