Have you ever noticed on your LinkedIn account, toward the right side, there is a little column listing people you may know?  Listed are often random contacts that you do, indeed “know” but, in actuality don’t really know at all.  For example, the intramural sports coordinator from college, who you emailed once, asking to join some flag football team.  Or that kid in high school you had to work with for a science project, but haven’t talked to since.

How is LinkedIn finding these people?

A recent lawsuit filed against LinkedIn may reveal the answer.  The lawsuit, filed on September 17 of this year in the District Court in the Northern District of California, alleges that LinkedIn “hacks” into its users’ email accounts, and downloads the email addresses of anyone who has ever been in contact with those users.  As stated in the complaint, “The hacking of the users’ email accounts and downloading of all email addresses associated with that user’s account is done without clearly notifying the user or obtaining his or her consent.”

The result is, they not only have the email addresses of those who their users contact regularly, but the addresses of those contacted only once, and then LinkedIn allegedly then uses this massive address database to spam marketing material to those emails.  The kicker is, as the plaintiffs claim, these emails include the user’s name, endorsing LinkedIn’s services.

Aside from feeling exploited, the plaintiffs claim this conduct has “caused embarrassment” and even lost them business.  Aside from the four plaintiffs who have initiated this action, it seems there have been many other, similar complaints on LinkedIn’s help page.  LinkedIn has denied any such allegations of misconduct, stating “We do give you the choice to share your email contacts . . . [and] will continue to do everything we can to make our communications about how to do this as clear as possible.”

To an extent, it does seem like a miscommunication  between the two parties – that a policy LinkedIn holds, while stated, is either unclear, difficult to find, or even just often overlooked.  Regardless of the outcome of the suit, and whether there are any real damages from LinkedIn’s marketing methods, it is something to be aware of—and does explain how LinkedIn knows about some of my faintest acquaintances.