{"id":3142,"date":"2014-04-02T00:41:23","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T04:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/?p=3142"},"modified":"2014-04-02T01:59:46","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T05:59:46","slug":"g31000-discovered-harvesting-linkedin-content-user-personal-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/g31000-discovered-harvesting-linkedin-content-user-personal-information\/","title":{"rendered":"G31000 Discovered Harvesting LinkedIn Content, User Personal Information"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"g31000harvest\"<\/a>The website for the G31000 Global Institute of Risk Management<\/a> has been discovered to be harvesting content from its LinkedIn ISO 31000 discussion group, apparently without permission of LinkedIn and against its terms of service. Furthermore, the site is posting LinkedIn user photos and contact information without the permission of such users.<\/p>\n

The “Discussions” page<\/a> on the G31000 site “clones” selected discussion threads from the G31000 LinkedIn group, without any redaction of user personal information. This would appear to be a serious breach of both the LinkedIn User Agreement<\/a>. While an examination of the site’s code seems to show an official LinkedIn API is not being used to gather the information, if G31000 were using a legally obtained API, it would still be in violation of the LinkedIn APIs Terms of Use<\/a>, which prohibits harvesting entire content, and posting user information without first requiring users to opt into such third party usage.<\/p>\n

In just one example discovered on 1 April, 2014, posts originally appearing on LinkedIn, for members only, appeared on the public G31000 and cloned information that included two members’ private email addresses as well as many users’ names and photos. (The photo below shows the information, with member emails redacted.)<\/p>\n

\"G31000<\/a>

Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The G31000 LinkedIn page was shut down for nearly a week<\/a> after the profile of the organization’s founder, Alex Dali, was investigated for containing fabricated information. Mr. Dali’s profile was restored once he provided LinkedIn documented evidence, but the profile of an alleged G31000 female employee was permanently deleted, when it was discovered to have been utilizing a photo of an cosmetics model<\/a>, and was actually being used by Mr. Dali. The use of photos of anyone other than the member is prohibited by LinkedIn terms of service.<\/p>\n

G31000 appears to stand in multiple violations of the LinkedIn policies, including this section of the general User Agreement (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

7.2. Misuse of the Services<\/strong><\/p>\n

LinkedIn may restrict, suspend or terminate the account of any Member who abuses or misuses the Services. Misuse of the Services includes inviting other Members with whom you do not know to connect; abusing the LinkedIn messaging services; creating multiple or false profiles; using the Services commercially without LinkedIn\u2019s authorization, infringing any intellectual property rights,<\/strong><\/em> violating any of the Do\u2019s and Don\u2019ts listed in Section 10, or any other behavior that LinkedIn, in its sole discretion, deems contrary to its purpose<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition, LinkedIn prohibits a user to “reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, decipher or otherwise attempt to derive [LinkedIn] source code.” By copying the content, G31000 may have violated a large number of specific prohibitions, such as that a user may not:<\/p>\n

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