The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn that automated web scraping of publicly accessible websites does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), even if the website owner objects to the scraping. This marks the second time in this case where…
Companies use a variety of causes of actions to protect their websites from competitors or others wanting to “scrape” data from their site using automated tools. Over the years, legal doctrines such as copyright infringement, misappropriation, unjust enrichment, breach of contract, and trespass to chattels have all been asserted, though…
In the last decade, social media platforms have embedded themselves in the human resources function in companies worldwide. Companies like LinkedIn and Indeed have built empires based on clever deployment of social media to assist in the hiring and networking processes, even as human resource professionals use social media for…
Since my last post on the subject (“LinkedIn Grapples with the Ripples of a 2012 Data Breach”), there have been several developments related to LinkedIn’s 2012 data breach. First, in May, LinkedIn announced it has finished the process of invalidating passwords at risk, specifically LinkedIn accounts that had not reset…
Last week on the official LinkedIn blog, the company’s chief information security officer, Cory Scott, reported the company had become aware of an additional set of data that has just been released consisting of e-mail and hashed password combinations of more than 100 million LinkedIn members. This recent release is…
Do you consider yourself famous? If the answer is no, then you have likely never been concerned with the invasion of your right of publicity. The right of publicity is the right of a person in his or her identity—name or likeness or any other indicia of identity. This right…