LinkedIn denied charges that the company breaks into the email accounts of its members without permission to harvest contacts' addresses.
A class action complaint by four users has charged the professional networking site with hacking into their external email accounts and downloading addresses of their contacts for monetary gain by repeatedly promoting its services to these contacts.
Paul Perkins, Pennie Sempell, Ann Brandwein, and Erin Eggers charged LinkedIn with 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 so-called hacking of the user's email account and download of addresses is done without "clearly notifying the user or obtaining his or her consent," which is likely to emerge as the crux of the case.
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