LinkedIn wins court order blocking mass scraping of user data

https://therecord.media/linkedin-wins-court-order-blocking-mass-scraping

36•ilamont•1h ago

Comments

TrueDuality•39m ago

Huh. Well, federal court so national precedent against creating accounts to scrape registration only content. Probably a good thing IMO. I would put money on the public statement by a LinkedIn official saying "Your profile is yours" will bite them in the future as they certainly don't treat it that way.

wmchen•34m ago

>Well, federal court so national precedent against creating accounts to scrape registration only content.

I'm not familiar with US Civil Law. Is a precedent established when a consent agreement/settlement is put into place in the US, as is the case in this article?

bentt•26m ago

It would be awesome if data that a site like Linkedin calls the “profile” could be containerized and encrypted in such a way that each individual user holds a key to a box with every piece of identifiable information, and can revoke the right for any 3rd party to access it.

That would make it “yours”

imglorp•5m ago

Like this? https://solidproject.org/

buzer•6m ago

The article says "deal". I assume that means settlement between these parties rather than actually evaluating the law?

collabs•33m ago

I created a second LinkedIn account for testing purposes and recently I started getting this which I thought was strange as this account had been live for several years. What changed recently? Could this restriction also be because of the push to block mass scraping?

----

Access to your account has been temporarily restricted

Why did this happen?

We take proactive actions to protect you when we detect potential unauthorized access or other activity that doesn’t comply with our policies.

What can I do next?

We first need to verify your identity to ensure your account safety. To regain access to your account, please submit a government-issued ID.

Learn more about verifying your identity.

----

toasty228•32m ago

They've been doing this for a while, they also scan your browser for thousands of known extensions... It's basically impossible to create a new account unless you send them a pictures of your balls next to a valid passport

toomuchtodo•27m ago

> they also scan your browser for thousands of known extensions

Works in Chrome, doesn't work in Firefox. Firefox randomizes extension IDs per install.

"Chrome extensions can expose internal files to web pages through the web_accessible_resources field in their manifest.json. When an extension is installed and has exposed a resource, a fetch() request to chrome-extension://{id}/{file} will succeed. When the extension is not installed, Chrome blocks the request and the promise rejects.

LinkedIn tests every extension in the list this way."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47613981

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967262

Papazsazsa•32m ago

Wild that Linkedin cares about this and not about how basic product improvements. But hey at least my feed has reels now!

writtenone•31m ago

Why would anyone use LinkedIn in the first place? It's not like anyone is getting jobs through it with all the AI slop and corporate kowtowing.

You'll also benefit from better privacy if you never register to begin with.

dam_jackalopes•21m ago

Maybe not for the HN crowd, but it's a requirement for applying to a lot of places if you're just an average person and/ or not in tech. I only started getting interviews after I finally put a picture on my profile. It sucks, but its used by a LOT of employers if only to try to verify you're an actual person.

polynomial•14m ago

Have they never heard of the telephone?

dam_jackalopes•5m ago

You'd have to ask them. You asked why people would use LinkedIn. "I have to have a LinkedIn profile in order to complete this application on Indeed" is a reason.

at1as•30m ago

The broadly open internet is probably not long for this world. If you scrape using fake accounts, that clearly violates ToS you agree to. Whereas for public pages it's less clear how courts will rule.

With companies increasingly viewing their defenseability and value as their data, their online presence will become more gated, and curated through their managed experiences. Social media, news, reddit, etc are already like this, and it's not inconceivable that companies like Amazon, Ebay (who are fighting their own scraping battles) move the direction of sign in to visit more than a few pages.

This would mean that we'll all be forced to use accounts to see anything substantial within a site. And it'll be harder to view things across sites.

I know that this particular case is about scraping personal data, but I think it's a catalyst for many upcoming lawsuits that will broadly shift the internet in an undesirable direction

rightnutwingjob•19m ago

If the ToS don’t allow scraping, there’s always the ”cyberhack” method of exfiltrating whatever data you want.

Make it look like it came from Enemy State of the week.

Everyone can maintain plausible deniability, and no one needs to get punished.

imzadi•19m ago

You already have to sign in to view more than the featured reviews on an Amazon product page.

unified101•30m ago

This isn't precedent setting.. it's a pure specific usecase that was blocked. Overall scraping is still legal and fine, per the earlier judgement.

wmchen•13m ago

One case that does seem to have the potential to be precedent setting in the US seems to be Air Canada's litigation against Seats.aero, who is also continuing to scrape Air Canada's award inventory data despite Air Canada loginwalling for award search a year after it filed this lawsuit. [1][2]

[1]: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.838...

[2]: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67896748/air-canada-v-l...

adharmad•27m ago

I wonder what was the point of scraping self-aggrandizing AI-written slop in the first place?

physicallyIllfr•25m ago

Linkedin data is very valuable. Tons of businesses are built on the back of scraping LinkedIn. Kknd of disappointing they won this case tbh, because it basically just gave corpos extereme privledge to ruin people's lives. They've been trying to get this outcome for years.

hsuduebc2•25m ago

This site which I sadly must use from time to time is truly one of the most pretentious annoying places on the web.

khalic•23m ago

Only because that would depreciate the data they sell

jsrozner•23m ago

"Only we can exploit the massive data source that we have. Stop encroaching on our moat."

azan_•22m ago

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

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