LinkedIn Forced to Pay Millions Because of Its Add Connections Service

Two years ago, LinkedIn was accused of “hacking” into its own users’ email accounts, and now the company is facing another class-action lawsuit related to its Add Connections service.  LinkedIn sent an email to several users not too long ago, in which it informed them that they are eligible for a class-action settlement concerning email marketing. So how much will LinkedIn have to pay for its mistakes this time? It looks like no less than $13 million, and while this many seem like a huge number in the grand scheme of things, nobody’s actually going to get rich from these payouts.

The problem with LinkedIn’s Add Connections program was that it allowed users to import their own personal contacts into the system and then asked them to agree to let the company send out invitations on their behalf. The thing is, if the targeted contact failed to reply to the invitation within a certain timeframe, the system would send out two more follow-up emails without the user’s consent. The payout aims to cover all of these email activities that took place between September 17, 2011 and October 31, 2014, and if you are sure that you were affected by Add Connections during this time span, you could go ahead and claim your piece of the $13 million. However, you should know that LinkedIn will ask you to swear that you were a user of Add Connections under penalty of perjury.

Thank you Mashable for providing us with this information.