LinkedIn Will Pay $13 Million to Settle Lawsuit



LinkedInDid you get an email from LinkedIn about a class-action lawsuit? The reason you received it is because LinkedIn will be paying a $13 million settlement. You might be eligible to receive a very small portion of that money.

We’ve all received those annoying, unwanted, spammy emails from LinkedIn. Someone who uses LinkedIn wants to add you to his or her professional network. Ignore the email, and one or two more “reminders” may appear in your inbox.

In 2013, I got so annoyed at the LinkedIn emails that I took to Twitter to complain about it. I’d stopped using LinkedIn a long time before that and had deleted my account. There was no possible way for people to add my non-existent account to their professional network.

My tweet got a response from @LinkedInHelp. To make a long story short, LinkedIn helped me to get my email address placed on their Do Not Contact list. The unwanted emails stopped – for that particular email address. I chose to just ignore the ones that I was receiving in my other email addresses.

A class-action lawsuit was filed by people who were even more disgruntled about those annoying emails than I was. One of their complaints was that they did not consent to having LinkedIn send two additional “reminder” emails to their contacts. Some felt that the “reminder” emails could cause harm to their professional reputation. A contact might incorrectly conclude that they were being spammy (when it was actually LinkedIn itself sending out the extra emails).

If you recently received an email about this class-action lawsuit, it could mean you might be eligible for some of the settlement money. The settlement is for people who used the “Add Connections” feature on LinkedIn. Start by filling out a claim on the website that discusses the settlement. The amount you will receive is unknown, and depends upon how many people file a claim for it.