LinkedIn is suing a software company it claims operated millions of fake accounts to scrape member data and sell it to third parties without authorization.
The social media giant alleges ProAPIs and its CEO, Rahmat Alam, devised a scheme that charged customers up to $15,000 per month for scraped user information taken from the platform, according to a lawsuit filed in Northern California federal court on Thursday.
The harvested data covers LinkedIn member profiles, posts, reactions and comments, including information accessible only behind the platform’s login wall, the suit said.
“Defendants’ industrial-scale fake account mill scrapes member information that real people have posted on LinkedIn, including data that is only available behind LinkedIn’s password wall and that Defendants’ customers may not otherwise be allowed to access, and certainly are not allowed to copy and keep in perpetuity,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit comes as data scraping operations have proliferated alongside the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), raising mounting concerns about consumer privacy.
LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft Corp., says it routinely detects ProAPIs’ scraping within hours but cannot stop all activity because the company creates “hundreds if not thousands” of fake accounts daily.
The complaint also alleges ProAPIs used LinkedIn’s trademark to market its product, falsely suggesting the social network endorses the company. Creating fake accounts violates LinkedIn’s terms of service.
ProAPIs had no comment on the lawsuit.
