Spammed users have until December 14 to make a claim

Oct 6, 2015 08:46 GMT  ·  By

LinkedIn has agreed to pay $13 million / €11.6 million as a settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought forward in 2013 from users that claimed the company was sending spam email to them, and to their friends on behalf of them.

Besides being the best social network to look for professionals in various industries, a fact we cannot deny, LinkedIn also has a reputation for being one of the Internet's biggest sources of spam, regardless of its top website status.

The company is known to send users an inhumane amount of email per week, which most users never requested, and in the past, proved to be hard to unsubscribe for.

Their stance on this practice has changed for the better in recent years, and many are crediting this change of behavior to the 2013 class-action lawsuit.

LinkedIn was sued back in 2013

The lawsuit specifically targeted the Add Connections feature on LinkedIn, which allowed the social network to import contacts from email accounts.

According to the plaintiffs, this feature was used to spam their imported contact lists with unsolicited emails that bore the name and pictures of the users that used the Add Connections feature.

According to the US judge that heard the case, "members consented to importing their contacts and sending the connection invitation, but did not find that members consented to LinkedIn sending the two reminder emails."

LinkedIn refused to acknowledge all allegations, but probably seeing the writing on the wall, decided to reach a quiet settlement before the court would reach a final ruling.

You can get a piece of the $13 million

As part of the settlement, LinkedIn added an option to the Add Connections feature that will let users prevent the sending of the additional "reminder" emails. Additionally, the company also sent out a mass email to all users last Friday, informing them of the lawsuit's settlement.

All LinkedIn users can make a claim against LinkedIn, and be eligible to receive compensation from the company, depending on the number of users that sign up to receive one.

If you want to make a claim, you must do it before December 14, 2015. If the settlement sum is less than $10 / €9 for person, LinkedIn will throw in an additional $750,000 / €670,000 in the total pot.