LinkedIn was forced to respond over the weekend to a lawsuit that accuses it of “breaking into” its user’s email accounts to access contacts for marketing purposes.
The lawsuit, filed by several LinkedIn customers, alleges the company impersonates its users by accessing their email contacts and sending out”endorsement emails” for various products and services.
“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.”
LinkedIn responded with a strong denial through a statement on its corporate blog, authored by senior director of litigation Blake Lawit, who wrote:
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, and with so much misinformation out there, we
wanted to clear up a few things for our members.
We do not access your email account without your permission.
Claims that we “hack” or “break into” members’ accounts are false.
We never deceive you by “pretending to be you” in order to
access your email account.
We never send messages or invitations to join LinkedIn on
your behalf to anyone unless you have given us permission to do so.
We do give you the choice to share your email contacts, so
you can connect on LinkedIn with other professionals that you know and trust.
We will continue to do everything we can to make our communications about how
to do this as clear as possible.
