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LinkedIn, a social media platform owned by Microsoft, is facing lawsuits from Premium users who claim the company leaked their private messages to third parties in order to train AI models without their consent.
On behalf of millions of LinkedIn Premium users, a proposed class action lawsuit was filed on Tuesday night. The lawsuit claims that in August of last year, LinkedIn secretly added a privacy setting that allowed users to enable or disable the sharing of their personal data.
Changes to LinkedIn’s Privacy Policy
After customer complaints, LinkedIn quietly revised its privacy policy on September 18 to allow the use of user data in AI model training and to clarify that deactivation “does not affect training that has already taken place” under a “frequently asked questions” link.
According to the lawsuit, LinkedIn made an effort to “cover its tracks” by promising to use personal data only for platform maintenance and improvement. However, in reality, it violated customers’ privacy and did so in order to avoid public attention and potential legal consequences.
On behalf of LinkedIn Premium users whose private information was shared with third parties for artificial intelligence training prior to September 18th, a lawsuit was filed in a federal court in San Jose, California, challenging the disclosure of this information.
It demands damages for breach of contract and unfair competition in California, as well as $1,000 per individual for violations of the federal Stored Communications Act.
“These are false claims with no merit,” LinkedIn reported in a statement. There was no immediate follow-up statement from a plaintiffs’ attorney.
U.S. President Donald Trump launched a joint venture involving Oracle, SoftBank, and Microsoft-backed OpenAI to construct artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The venture may get $500 billion in investment. Several hours later, the complaint was filed.
The case is De La Torre v. LinkedIn Corp, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 25-00709.
