LinkedIn settles $13m lawsuit

LinkedIn has agreed to pay £8.45m $13m to users to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of sending too many unsolicited emails to users.

LinkedIn’s “add connections” feature, which lets users import their personal contacts into the social network (the notorious subject line “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”).

If a user ignored it, LinkedIn followed them up with two further ones again inviting them to join LinkedIn.

The grounds the lawsuit were while those users may have given permission for the initial invitation to be sent out, they did not give explicit consent for the following two emails of for their name to be used in them. The settlement will filter down to LinkedIn users in the US and according to an open letter from the lawyers leading the class action suit, the compensation could be as low as $10.

LinkedIn in statement said that the lawsuit made “a number of false allegations”, despite that they had decided to settle anyway, so that they can put their focus on finding additional ways to improve our member’s experiences on LinkedIn. They further said “Our core value is putting our Members first.”