 "LinkedIn sued for 'hacking' users' email accounts, company refutes claims")
Professional social networking site LinkedIn is in for some serious trouble. The service is being sued by a group of users for allegedly hacking into their email accounts. LinkedIn has tried to allay fears of other users and has claimed that it does not access email accounts without permission.
A group of LinkedIn users sued the company in a California federal court, accusing it of hacking into their email accounts last week. “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 Linkedln’s servers,” the complaint reads. “LinkedIn is able to download these addresses without requesting the password for the external email accounts or obtaining users’ consent.”
Sued
Essentially, the group has alleged that LinkedIn impersonates users with the intent of obtaining access to their email accounts. Once it grabs hold of the addresses, it apparently sends “endorsement mails” for products and services. These mails contain name and likeness of those existing users from whom LinkedIn “surreptitiously” acquired the list of addresses, the complaint says.
Blake Lawit of LinkedIn, promptly put up a blog post to explain that these accusations were false, in order to calm down fears other users may have regarding the lawsui_t. “As you may have read recently, a class action lawsuit was filed against LinkedIn last week. The lawsuit alleges that we ‘break into’ the email accounts of our members who choose to upload their email address books to LinkedIn. Quite simply, this is not true,”_ he wrote.
Lawit went on to add that the company did not access email accounts without permission or pretends to be the user in order to access the mailbox. He also wrote that the service never sends messages or invitations to join LinkedIn on the users’ behalf unless explicit permission has been given to it.
LinkedIn is going to try and make its instructions on connecting users’ contact list as clear as possible, in order to avoid similar misunderstandings. “LinkedIn is committed to putting our members first, which includes being transparent about how we protect and utilize our members’ data. We believe that the legal claims in this lawsuit are without merit, and we intend to fight it vigorously,” the company also said in a statement to AllThingsD.
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