![]() ![]() Some backstory on this: LinkedIn, Facebook and others in the lead-up to GDPR coming into effect moved data processing that had been going through Ireland to the US. There were two parts to the supervision, as the DPC describes it:įirst, the DPC found that LinkedIn in the US had obtained emails for 18 million people who were not already members of the social network, and then used these in a hashed form for targeted advertisements on the Facebook platform, “with the absence of instruction from the data controller” - that is, LinkedIn Ireland - “as is required.” LinkedIn has since ceased the practice as a result of the investigation. ![]() In short: in a bid to get more people to sign up to the service, LinkedIn admitted that it was using people’s email addresses - some 18 million in all - in a way that was not transparent. The DPC had conducted - and concluded - an investigation of Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, originally prompted by a complaint from a user in 2017, over LinkedIn’s practices regarding people who were not members of the social network. In a list of investigations that have been reported concerning Facebook, WhatsApp and the Yahoo data breach, the DPC revealed one investigation that had not been reported before. The details were revealed in a report published Friday by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner covering activities in the first six months of this calendar year. Now, a run-in with a regulator in Europe illuminates how some of LinkedIn’s practices leading up to GDPR implementation in Europe were not only uncanny, but actually violated data protection rules, in LinkedIn’s case concerning some 18 million email addresses. LinkedIn, the social network for the working world with close to 600 million users, has been called out a number of times for how it is able to suggest uncanny connections to you, when it’s not even clear how or why LinkedIn would know enough to make those suggestions in the first place. ![]()
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