Data is the 21st century digital gold. Sorry, Bitcoin.
LinkedIn just filed a complaint against ProAPIs, Inc. for allegedly setting up fake LinkedIn accounts to scrape data from real LinkedIn accounts.
Linkedin complaint v. proapis, inc.
Although Defendants conceal how they obtain LinkedIn data, they freely acknowledge that they offer “real-time, detailed data for individual and company LinkedIn profiles” that is “comprehensive” and “up-to-the-second.”
They rent out their scraping services to customers who pay up to $15,000 per month to scrape LinkedIn. 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.
Defendants conduct this illicit activity while including LinkedIn’s trademarks in materials on their website without authorization. Doing so provides the false sense that LinkedIn is somehow associated with or endorses Defendants’ unlawful business. To be clear: there is no association or endorsement. What Defendants are doing is unlawful and must stop.
EXCERPT FROM LINKEDIN COMPLAINT
DOWNLOAD LINKEDIN COMPLAINT
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