LinkedIn Sues Company for Unauthorized Scraping of Member Profiles
LinkedIn sued web-scraping company ProAPIs and its principal, Rehmat Alam, on Thursday for its alleged unauthorized scraping of member profiles, some of which was done by fake accounts.
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The Microsoft-owned social media network's complaint in the U.S. District Court for Northern California alleges that the “defendants operate a vast network of continuously-created fake accounts,” which they “use to log into LinkedIn and scrape LinkedIn member, company, and school data, as well as member posts, reactions, and comments.”
“Although Defendants conceal how they obtain LinkedIn data, they freely acknowledge that they offer ‘real-time, detailed data for individual and company LinkedIn profiles’ that is ‘comprehensive’ and ‘up-to-the-second,’ … including data that is only available behind LinkedIn’s password wall and that Defendants’ customers may not otherwise be allowed to access,” said the complaint in case 3:25-cv-08393.
Those actions are done with LinkedIn’s trademarks appearing on ProAPIs' materials without authorization, giving the illusion that the platform gave its approval, the suit said. “To be clear: there is no association or endorsement. What Defendants are doing is unlawful and must stop.”
The complaint includes claims of breach of contract, fraud and deceit, and violations of both the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the California Comprehensive Data Access and Fraud Act.
“Our terms of service have always been clear on these issues: we do not permit members or third parties to scrape personal data and use it in ways our members have not agreed to,” said Sarah Wight, LinkedIn's vice president of litigation, competition and enforcement, in a post on the platform Thursday.
She added that LinkedIn is “deeply committed to safeguarding our members’ information,” noting that it has filed several lawsuits against data scrapers as part of its “aggressive legal action to prevent misuse of member information” when necessary.
“We will continue to build new safeguards to stop fake accounts and prevent scraping, and we will continue to take legal action when needed,” Wight said. “Our goal is simple: keep control of your data where it belongs -- with you.”