Disgruntled LinkedIn Users File Class Action Lawsuit Over Email Usage

LinkedIn Corp. was slammed with another privacy class action lawsuit last week accusing the company of wrongfully accessing information from its users’ third-party email accounts. Specifically, the plaintiffs accuse the online networking company of hacking into their email accounts and downloading email addresses to send out unauthorized advertising emails to nonusers of the site.

According to the class action lawsuit, filed September 17, LinkedIn sends out multiple emails advertising its products and services to users who have not subscribed to the site. These “endorsement emails” are sent to the list of email addresses that were obtained without users’ express consent. Further, these emails contain the users’ names and likenesses, even when the user did not authorize or consent to these communications.

“These ‘endorsement emails’ are sent to email addresses taken from LinkedIn users’ external email accounts, including the addresses of former spouses, clients, opposing counsel, etc.,” the LinkedIn class action lawsuit says.

Even though LinkedIn claims that it will “not email anyone without your permission,” the company, “without consent, downloads and indefinitely stores email addresses gathered from its members’ third-party email accounts,” according to the class action lawsuit.

In their proposed class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim that LinkedIn does not provide a mechanism to prevent future advertising emails from being sent.

“When users sign up for LinkedIn they are required to provide an external email address as their username and to set up a new password for their LinkedIn account. LinkedIn uses this information to hack into the user’s external email account and extract email addresses,” the LinkedIn class action lawsuit says. “If a LinkedIn user leaves an external email account open, LinkedIn pretends to be that user and downloads the email addresses contained anywhere in that account to LinkedIn’s servers. LinkedIn is able to download these addresses without requesting the password for the external email accounts or obtaining users’ consent.”

The plaintiffs believe that LinkedIn’s collection and storage of email addresses is motivated by monetary gain. “LinkedIn never discloses to its users that it will send multiple emails to each email address that it has harvested. These follow-up emails are critical to LinkedIn signing up new users.”

According to the class action lawsuit, “LinkedIn states that these emails are worth ten dollars ($10) each because they carry an endorsement and the ability to send up to two reminder emails and are thus ‘better than an email or cold call.’”

According to the plaintiffs, LinkedIn “makes numerous deceptive and misleading statements. LinkedIn expressly states that they will not email any recipients without their permission. … Never does LinkedIn state that they will be sending multiple emails on a user’s behalf.”

The plaintiffs claim that LinkedIn took the “names, photographs, likenesses and identities of Plaintiffs to advertise its products and services for a commercial purpose without Plaintiffs’ consent, for unfair and deceptive business practices,” and in violation of the company’s User Agreement in violation of state and federal law.

The plaintiffs are represented by Larry C. Russ, Dorian S. Berger and Daniel P. Hipskind of Russ August & Kabat.

The LinkedIn Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Paul Perkins, et al. v. LinkedIn Corp., Case No. 5:13-cv-04303, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On June 12, 2014, a federal judge dismissed several claims from the LinkedIn privacy class action lawsuit but allowed plaintiffs to amend their claims and try again.

UPDATE 2: The LinkedIn email harvesting class action lawsuit was preliminarily approved on Sept. 15, 2015.

UPDATE 3: Details on how to file a claim for the LinkedIn Add Connections class action settlement are up! See them here.

UPDATE 4/20/16: The LinkedIn Add Connections Class Action Settlement is currently under appeal.  Claims will not be paid until all appeals are exhausted.  We appreciate your ongoing  patience. Top Class Actions will continue to provide updates as we learn more.  Keep checking back and let us know when you receive a check in the comments section below or on our  Facebook page.

UPDATE 5: On Oct. 17, 2016, Top Class Actions readers who submitted valid claims for the LinkedIn add connections class action settlement started receiving checks worth as much as $20.43! Congratulations to all our viewers who got PAID!