Lawyers win big in LinkedIn's $13m email spam lawsuit (you might get $10, maybe more)

Lawyers tasked with doling out LinkedIn's $13m "Add Connections" class-action settlement are advising people to collect their share of the payout. The settlement [PDF] was agreed to last month in a California court, and ends a two-year legal fight over the social network's Add Connections feature. The website must pay out the …

[John Tserkezis]

I disengaged myself as a linkedin member. Twice (yes I'm a glutton for punishment).

While they didn't abuse the Add Connections feature while I was a member, this does tell me they absolutely will think of of something else (presumably that's legal now) to get members to click or do whatever the hell they think will make money.

I've worked with the type, they'll keep inventing new and inane things to get what they want, and will only work "smarter" when the law limits any particular idea. Or if employees start walking, whichever is applicable.

Welcome to your new brand of hell.

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

Well I signed up thinking it would be more professional than FarceBork but no, friends of friends want to be my buddy. And I get multiple emails from LinkedIn saying 'be his/her friend pleeeease'.

Nope.

[Vic]

And I get multiple emails from LinkedIn saying 'be his/her friend pleeeease'.

Lucky you.

I get a list of "people you may know". It always includes Darl McBride.

Vic.

[Phil O'Sophical]

I get a list of "people you may know". It always includes Darl McBride.

Mine often includes a friend who died several years ago, and whose linkedin account was supposedly deleted. Just annoying for me, but must be distressing for her family.

[Anonymous Coward]

I received linkedin "sign up"invitation emails in the names of people I knew socially but who would not have sent me a direct invitation. I assumed it was the usual case of their existing contact list being picked over by the service.

[Graham Marsden]

You might get $10...

... meanwhile it's trebles all round for the Lawyers...

[T. F. M. Reader]

Lawyers hit an easy target

1. I don't know anyone who has knowingly given LinkedIn permission to go over his/her contacts - that would be necessary to prompt the user to send an invite.

2. I definitely received invitations and reminders to email addresses that could not possibly be in the contact lists of the people who invited me. And I asked them to check - they weren't.

3. Whenever I talked to people who had sent me the invites they said they had been firmly under the impression that I was a LinkedIn user (had joined shortly before, whatever). No one realized that LinkedIn prompted them to invite me to join the network, not just connect on it. My friends know I am not on social networks, and they would not pester me with invitations. But if the impression was that I joined LinkedIn of my own volition, that's another matter.

Conclusions:

A. LinkedIn do not explicitly ask for a user's permission to sift through their contact lists.

B. They use more sophisticated and sinister methods of metadata analysis to connect people than just going through the users' contact lists.

C. They do not tell users that they will be inviting others to join LinkedIn as opposed to join them on LinkedIn, which is misleading.

Now, will anyone tell the lawyers they can sue again?

[Herby]

Us "normal" people...

Just get crumbs. Or in other terms, a simple sawbuck. Still crumbs.

Of course, there will be mounds of paperwork just to collect. What else is new.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure there will be fine print to absolve them of their other wrongdoings

A friend turned on some whangdandy feature which linked his outlook addressbook. This gave linkedin my cell number and I have received two bogus spam calls a week since.

[TheBoyMid]

Who cares?

One email is fine, but two reminders is "unfair competition and a privacy intrusion"? Do the reminder emails send out discount vouchers and my home address? Damn. Oh well, $10 should make up for all that.

Actually I can see why this would me a massive problem for the recipient rather than a privacy issue for the sender, given that the average inbox is completely free of spam, phishing attempts and other unsolicited email...