Source :
http://www.linkedinclassaction.com/

Russ August & Kabat Has Filed A Nationwide Class Action Lawsuit Claiming LinkedIn’s Email Practices Violate State And Federal Laws

A nationwide class action lawsuit filed by Russ August & Kabat challenges LinkedIn’s disturbing practice of accessing users’ third-party email accounts (e.g., Google’s Gmail, Yahoo! Mail) without users’ consent, harvesting email addresses that appear in the account, and sending multiple reminder emails ostensibly on behalf of the user advertising LinkedIn to non-members.  The class action lawsuit charges LinkedIn with violations of federal and state law.

Source Document :
http://www.linkedinclassaction.com/files/74631323.pdf

Which is also put in here…
Linkedin Case Action

Case has been filed in Mid September 2013 it seems. Some opening paras  from the Class Action Complaint for Damages : 

2.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. Linkedln provides no functional way to stop multiple subsequent advertising emails from being sent.

3. When users sign up for LinkedIn they are required to provide an external email address as their username and to setup a new password for their Linkedln account. LinkedIn uses this information to hack into the user’s external email account and extract email addresses. 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 LinkedIn’s servers. Linkedln is able to download these addresses without requesting the password for the external email accounts or obtaining users’ consent.

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For the record, LinkedIn has vigorously denied these allegations. See :

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/34702/linkedin-denies-spamming-tapping-user-email/

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What do you think ? Is this practice fair or unfair,if being done ? Do you believe information in your  E-mail account should be confidential only to you  ?  If so, do you think it is REALLY secret ? And how do you think it impacts recruitment – both for a Candidate as well as a Client ( and perhaps, also, for their competitors ! (