LinkedIn Has Denied Harvesting User Email Accounts Illegally

At the end of last week, we brought you word that customers have already filed a lawsuit against LinkedIn, claiming that the company has hacked their email accounts without prior permission. Well, LinkedIn has already issued a denial over this particular allegation that they have broken into the email accounts of its members without permission beforehand in order to harvest their contacts’ addresses. In the class action complaint by a quartet of users, they charged that the professional networking site had hacked into their external email accounts, and this alleged act also included the downloading of addresses of their contacts for monetary gain, in addition to promoting their services to these contacts on a repeated basis.

The four are Paul Perkins, Pennie Sempell, Ann Brandwein, and Erin Eggers, and the crux of the case will most probably have to do with the alleged hacking of the user’s email account, in addition to downloading of addresses that was performed without “clearly notifying the user or obtaining his or her consent.” LinkedIn, in their defence, claimed that they are above board of such behavior, and claimed that such allegations are false. Blake Lawit, senior director of litigation at LinkedIn, mentioned, “We never send messages or invitations to join LinkedIn on your behalf to anyone unless you have given us permission to do so.” Time to let the law of the land run its due course.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: linkedin