LinkedIn to pay $18.3m in email class action settlement

The company over the weekend began advising [pdf] customers of the settlement, which comes as part of a class-action lawsuit over emails sent from user accounts.

The lawsuit alleged LinkedIn accessed user accounts without their permission and used their names to send connection invitations to contacts imported from their external email accounts.

LinkedIn at the time labelled the accusations false, and a court later found that LinkedIn members had given the company permission to send the email invitations.

But it also found that users had not consented to two follow up 'reminder' emails about the invitations, sent by LinkedIn on their behalf.

LinkedIn said it continues to deny any wrongdoing, but has advised users it had agreed to pay US$13 million to affected users, and would additionally made changes to its privacy and product policy.

The settlement has been agreed to by the lawyers of the class action plaintiffs but has not yet been officially approved.

The US$13 million will be distribruted pro rata, which means the amount each individual gets is dependent on the total number of approved claims.

If the payout ends up amounting to less than US$10 per person, LinkedIn will have to fork out an additional US$750,000 into the fund, it said.

Those eligible include users who were members of its 'add connections' program from September 2011 to October 2014. Users can apply to be part of the compensation package here.

Alongside the monetary settlement, LinkedIn said it would implement new functionality by the end of the year that would allow members to stop reminders from being sent by cancelling the connection invitation.

It will also display a disclosure notice when users send connection invitations, advising them that LinkedIn will send two reminder emails to the recipient.