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ARTICLE · 17 AUGUST 2016

LinkedIn Has Beef With Data Scraping Bots

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Linkedin has filed a lawsuit to prevent unauthorized use of "bots" that register fake profiles on the social network and steal data about actual users.

United StatesMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
James Gatto
James Gatto
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Linkedin has filed a lawsuit to prevent unauthorized use of "bots" that register fake profiles on the social network and steal data about actual users. According to the suit, these acts constitute a breach of Linkedin's terms of use and violate federal computer fraud law. LinkedIn alleges that the use of the bots violates the agreement all users of the network must execute, which specifically bars the copying of other users' profiles and information, and the use of bots or other software add-ons to access the LinkedIn website.

Many companies use bots or other software to obtain data from websites. This practice, also known as "screen scraping" can raise a number of legal issues. Among these issues are copyright infringement, if the content being scraped includes pictures or other creative content covered by copyright (assuming no fair use or other exception applies). Additionally, if the scraping violates the terms of use of the site being scraped, breach of contract

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