LinkedIn Rubbishes Email Hacking Allegations

LinkedIn, the largest professional social networking site, has denied allegations that it breaks into members email accounts without permission to blast out messages.

The allegations were made by four users (Paul Perkins, Pennie Sempell, Ann Brandwein, and Erin Eggers) has charged the business-focused social network with hacking 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.”

The complainants have asked the world’s most popular professional-networking website to pay them the money that it earned by using their LinkedIn accounts.

According to Bloomberg, one such user – Deborah Lagutaris — said that LinkedIn blasted more than 3,000 of her contacts (allegedly using its aforementioned technique). This included those who had been CC’d on Lagutaris’ various email messages, recipients who might have not even been in her actual contact book.

“Quite simply, this is not true, and with so much misinformation out there, we wanted to clear up a few things for our members,” Blake Lewit, Senior Director of Litigation at LinkedIn wrote in a official blog post.

– We do not access your email account without your permission. Claims that we “hack” or “break into” members’ accounts are false.
– We never deceive you by “pretending to be you” in order to access your email account.
– We never send messages or invitations to join LinkedIn on your behalf to anyone unless you have given us permission to do so.

LinkedIn claims to have the largest online professional network with more than 238 million members, across more than 200 countries and territories around the world, accounting for 19 languages, including executives from every Fortune 500 company.