LinkedIn has filed a lawsuit against Delaware company ProAPIs Inc. and its founder and CTO, Rehmat Alam, for allegedly scraping legitimate data through more than a million fake accounts.
ProAPIs activity constitutes a violation of LinkedIn’s terms of service (ToS), based on which the company seeks to get the court’s approval for a permanent injunction, deletion of the scraped data, and payment of damages.
LinkedIn is a Microsoft-owned professional-oriented social network with more than a billion members worldwide.
Scraping refers to the automated extraction of profile data using bots or fake accounts. Some data leaks compile information sourced from scraped details, which initially raised concerns about a potential security breach.
However, official investigations later confirmed that the information originated from scraping activities rather than a direct compromise.
Fighting scrapers
In 2022, LinkedIn introduced three new mechanisms to fight fake profiles on the platform.
According to Sarah Wight, VP, Legal at LinkedIn, ProAPI continually created more than a million fake accounts to perform scraping, which LinkedIn promptly detected and restricted.
Taking matters further, LinkedIn will now hold ProAPI, Alam, and a Pakistan-based technical enabler entity named Netswift, accountable for their actions.
“We continue to invest in advanced technology and dedicated teams to stop unauthorized data scraping, and when necessary, we take aggressive legal action to prevent misuse of member information,” reads Wight’s statement.
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