LinkedIn has become a joke in the tech world for constantly sending unwarranted emails to accept invitations and paid accounts. Now the company is in legal hot water and stands accused of spamming even more users outside of its network.
Reuters reports that San Jose Judge Lucy Koh had found guilty LinkedIn of violating users' external emails accounts and stealing contacts from their address books. With this information in tow, LinkedIn allegedly spammed email contacts in the users' address book in an attempt to attract more customers to sign up for accounts.
According to the 39-page decision, LinkedIn was still acting within its boundaries to send an initial "endorsement email" to recruit users contacts to join LinkedIn. However, the social media company overstepped its privacy policy by sending repeat messages vying for more members to join the LinkedIn Network.
Fair justice
In her decision Judge Koh shamed the act of sending multiple messages noting that it could "injure users' reputations allowing contacts to think that the users are the types of people who spam their contacts or are unable to take the hint that their contacts do not want to join their LinkedIn network."
As repentance for LinkedIn's actions, Judge Koh's decision also allows customers to pursue a lawsuit against the company for violating a California unfair competition law and users' right of publicity.
The latter of which protects individuals' names from being used without permission for commercial purposes, such as advertising LinkedIn memberships.
In the future LinkedIn may face a class action lawsuit for damages caused by the company's implied email harvesting and improper marketing.
Recode law
This latest court case is just the latest legal proceeding that highlights how wiretap laws enacted before the Internet need to be modernized for the digital age.
Previously Judge Koh ruled that Gmail users could purse a lawsuit against Google for its email scanning practices, which the company allegedly used to generate targeted advertisements.
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