How to reclaim your email when LinkedIn’s Intro shuts down

LinkedIn’s attempt to wedge itself into iPhone users’ emails is being “shut down”—a euphemism for killed—as part of the professional network’s effort to focus “on fewer things.” But LinkedIn’s Deep Nishar said the company is still focused on email, so maybe its Intro product is going away because it was a little creepy. 

Intro launched in October as a way for LinkedIn to go beyond its own walls and be where you spend all your time: your email inbox. Intro placed a card with LinkedIn profile information in every email you received in the iOS Mail app, so if a stranger reached out to you by email, you could see their professional information and add them to your LinkedIn network.


Sounds like an easy way to verify if a stranger’s email is worth responding to, right? Well, security experts took LinkedIn to task for the tech behind Intro—LinkedIn acted as a middleman between you and the sender, rerouting emails to its own server to place the Intro card inside each message.
LinkedIn defended Intro, claiming that all information was fully encrypted and deleted from LinkedIn’s servers immediately. The network also never stored unencrypted email usernames or passwords or read the content of messages that passed between users.
It’s unclear if the controversy influenced LinkedIn’s decision to drop Intro, but Nishar said LinkedIn will “continue to look for ways to bring this kind of functionality to our members through existing partnerships.” It’s notable that Rapportive, a similar LinkedIn tool for Gmail users, was spared the wood-chipper.
If you installed Intro, there’s some bad news: Not only is the tool going away, but you have to uninstall it from your iPhone settings or your email will just stop working. As in, you won’t be able to send or receive emails at all. Removing Intro and restoring your old settings requires a little bit of effort. To uninstall: Settings > General > Profiles > Tap to remove all profiles that start with “Intro.”
Then you have to restore your regular account. Under Settings, tap Mail, then tap the account you want to restore and switch it back on. Remember, you have until March 7 to get your email situation squared away.