LinkedIn has prevailed against two lawsuits challenging its practice of scanning users’ browser extensions, after a judge granted the Microsoft subsidiary’s motion to dismiss the cases. Judge Vince Chhabria of the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the users who sued failed to adequately allege that they had standing to bring the claims, as neither asserted that they “had browser extensions installed that conveyed private information to LinkedIn.”
In his ruling issued on Tuesday, Chhabria granted the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaints but expressed scepticism that they could present a plausible case. “Given LinkedIn’s further arguments that users voluntarily download browser extensions, which by their nature intentionally expose data to websites, it seems unlikely that the plaintiffs will ever be able to allege a privacy violation, much less prevail at the end of the day,” he wrote.
California residents Nicholas Farrell and Jeff Ganan filed separate class actions against LinkedIn in April, seeking to represent themselves and other LinkedIn users. Ganan’s attorney, J.R. Howell, said he is evaluating whether to bring the claims in a California state court, which applies different requirements on standing, or to appeal the ruling in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
“The federal court determined that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the LinkedIn users’ claims,” Howell said. “The court did not adjudicate whether LinkedIn’s surveillance practices were lawful. The ruling is not a vindication of the mass surveillance program alleged in our complaint.”
How the “BrowserGate” dispute emerged
The plaintiffs filed their lawsuits following a report alleging that “LinkedIn Is illegally searching your computer.” LinkedIn did not deny that it scans browsers to identify extensions, a practice it had already disclosed. The so-called “BrowserGate” report was issued by a German entity called Fairlinked, which describes itself as a trade association and advocacy group for commercial LinkedIn users. It appeared to be run by the same people behind Teamfluence, an Estonian software company that sued LinkedIn in Munich after its CEO was banned by the platform.
Howell, who represents Ganan, also serves as counsel for Fairlinked in the US. In a June court filing, he wrote that “my investigative work with Fairlinked e.V. and Browsergate occurred before my office filed the Ganan complaint.”
Judge finds no concrete harm alleged
LinkedIn said in its motion to dismiss that it uses detection systems to identify the type of automated scraping and bot activity that Teamfluence was deploying. The company told the court that Teamfluence markets a Google Chrome browser plug-in designed to “identify 100% of your LinkedIn traffic,” and that LinkedIn caught it and banned its CEO from the platform, prompting a legal dispute in Germany.
A German tribunal recently determined that the “Teamfluence” software violated LinkedIn’s User Agreement, and that LinkedIn’s suspension of the relevant user accounts was “objectively justified overall and not arbitr
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Image: arstechnica.com
