Did you know you can legally steal data from LinkedIn?
LinkedIn has always been very protective of their data.
The LinkedIn members database is considered one of the highest quality business resources.
LinkedIn guards it like Fort Knox.
For years, people have been trying to "scrape" data from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is constantly making updates to prevent people from stealing your contact information.
It's definitely a cat and mouse game that will never end.
In 2017 LinkedIn sent a cease-and-desist order to HiQ to prevent scraping the LinkedIn website.
HiQ Labs sued LinkedIn and the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
The case was returned to an appeals court for further clarification.
The other day, the appeals court reaffirmed their decision in favor of HiQ Labs.
The ruling says it's okay for companies to scrape publicly available LinkedIn data.
What is publicly available on LinkedIn?
Did you know you have two LinkedIn profiles?
One version is available to people who are logged into LinkedIn and this data is protected under the court ruling.
You also have a public LinkedIn profile.
This data can be legally scraped by companies according to the appeals court.
I agree with their decision because LinkedIn allows this data to be seen by people when they are not logged into LinkedIn.
This information is seen by search engines which can give you and your business more exposure online.
How can you see which parts of your LinkedIn profile is public and available for scraping?
Go to Settings & Privacy, Visibility, Edit Your Public Profile, and Edit Visibility in the right column.
Under Public, you can select which parts of your LinkedIn profile and activity are displayed publicly.
Personally, I share most of my LinkedIn profile publicly because I want to appear in the search engines.
I want to make it very easy for people to find me online.
There's nothing in my LinkedIn profile that I consider confidential.
I do not let anyone see the email address I use for LinkedIn because I'm tired of people adding me to their email list without my permission.
If someone does get access to my LinkedIn email address, the spam goes to my assistant not to my primary email address.
Check your LinkedIn profile settings and let me know if you have any questions.
