LinkedIn is suing a company it claims used a network of millions of fake accounts to scrape data from its members and sell it to third parties on an “industrial scale”—charging clients up to $15,000 per month for access to the data.
In a lawsuit filed in a Northern California federal court, LinkedIn accuses the software firm ProAPIs of undermining “the confidence that LinkedIn members place in the company to protect their information” and of harming and threatening the platform. The suit also names the company’s CEO, Rahmat Alam.
LinkedIn claims the network of fake accounts “scrapes” member data such as company and school information, as well as posts, reactions, and comments. According to the filing, LinkedIn’s technical defenses regularly restrict fake accounts within hours of their creation, but the fake profiles still have enough time to gather significant amounts of data.
The business networking giant further alleges that ProAPIs conducts this unauthorized scraping “while including LinkedIn’s trademarks in materials on its website without authorization,” giving a false impression that the company is affiliated with or endorsed by LinkedIn.
“To be clear: there is no association or endorsement,” the filing reads. “What defendants are doing is unlawful and must stop.”
Sarah Wight, LinkedIn’s vice president for legal, addressed the issue in a post on LinkedIn, saying the company takes aggressive legal action to prevent misuse of member information. The exec pointed to previous cases the company has fought against data scrapers, including its legal victory against software firm ProxyCurl, which landed in July this year.
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LinkedIn has shown a willingness to crack down hard on third parties who seek to exploit its users’ data for profit. But at the same time, it’s also facing lawsuits that accuse it of misusing its own customer data.
In January, a class-action lawsuit was filed in California accusing the company of “unlawfully disclosing” users’ private direct messages (DMs) to third parties for the purpose of training AI. The lawsuit claims LinkedIn was violating the Stored Communications Act, Breach of Contract, and California’s Unfair Competition Law.
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