LinkedIn Password Class Action Lawsuit (You knew it was coming…)

June 19th, 2012. By AbiK

You knew it was coming. Close to 6.5 million passwords get leaked and you know no one’s gonna sit quietly and think “all’s well that end’s well”. Uh-uh.

And so it is for LinkedIn. (Hey—perfect place for gratuitous LawyersandSettlements.com LinkedIn plug: follow us!)

Remember that security breach they announced on June 6th? The one where over six million passwords were “leaked” to a hash cracking website? The one where LinkedIn started deactivating accounts and sending out security advisory emails to its members? That one.

Well, there’s been a class action lawsuit filed against LinkedIn. Needless to say, it’s an internet privacy lawsuit.

According to the filing with the U.S. District Court – Northern California, LinkedIn failed to “properly safeguard its users’ digitally stored personally identifiable information, including e-mail addresses, passwords, and login credentials”. The lawsuit was filed by Katie Szpyrka, a Chicago-based senior associate at a real estate firm, who’s been a LinkedIn member since 2010 and who’s forked over the extra cash to become a “premium” LinkedIn member.

Since the LinkedIn password leak, there haven’t been any reports of any LinkedIn accounts being accessed without authorization, so no outright injury so to speak. But still, there was a security breach and, therefore, the lawsuit also seeks an injunction against LinkedIn, to ensure the social networking site does a better job of protecting members’ privacy.

Given the economy, and the latest jobless numbers, I’m betting the LinkedIn security breach won’t really affect their membership numbers—none of my contacts have been leaving in droves; in fact, they’re networking away. But we’ll see what happens as the LinkedIn class action lawsuit moves along…

Tags: Class Action Lawsuit, Internet Privacy, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Password, Online Security, Security Breach

This was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Class Action, Internet/E-commerce, lawsuits . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.