LinkedIn says the suit is without merit and plans on fighting the charges

Sep 21, 2013 07:20 GMT  ·  By

Four LinkedIn customers have filed a class action lawsuit accusing the professional social networking website of hacking into their email accounts and sending marketing emails to their contacts.

“The wrongful conduct by LinkedIn that is the subject of this complaint arises from Linkedln's practice of breaking into its users' third party email accounts, downloading email addresses that appear in the account, and then sending out multiple reminder emails ostensibly on behalf of the user advertising LinkedIn to non-members,” the complaint reads.

The plaintiffs in this case are Paul Perkins, former manager of international advertising sales for The New York Times; Pennie Sempell, lawyer and author; Ann Brandwein, professor of statistics at Baruch College in New York City, and Erin Eggers, film producer and former VP of Morgan Creek Productions in Los Angeles.

They claim the website doesn’t provide users with a way to stop the advertising emails – which are said to be motivated by monetary gain – from being sent. Court documents also point to the profile of Brian Guan, principal software engineer at LinkedIn, which describes his role as “devising hack schemes to make lots of $$$ with Java, Groovy and cunning at Team Money!.”

They say that LinkedIn doesn’t inform its users to the fact that multiple emails will be sent to each of the harvested addresses. Several complaints made by other users regarding this practice are also highlighted by the plaintiffs.

LinkedIn is accused of violating several laws, including the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the Comprehensive Data Access and Fraud Act, the Wiretap Act, and the Common Law Right of Publicity.

LinkedIn representatives have told Bloomberg that they will fight the accusations.

“LinkedIn is committed to putting our members first, which includes being transparent about how we protect and utilize our members’ data,” LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said.