Linkedin ‘spread damaging user details’

LINKEDIN sent out incorrect and damaging information about some of its users to their contacts, according to complaints in a report from Ireland’s data regulator.

The social network, which is aimed at professionals, added a feature called Mentioned in the News, which emailed users and their connections if their name was mentioned in the media.

However, the tool wrongly linked users to stories about others who shared the same name, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said.

In its annual report, the DPC said a networking site, understood to be Linkedin, failed to resolve complaints from two users “to their satisfaction”.

One complainant was mentioned in a news article about a person with the same name, which detailed their private life and unsuccessful career.

After Linkedin sent out the article to the user’s friends and connections, the complainant said the article had “been detrimental to their professional standing and had resulted in the loss of contracts for their business”.

The Irish DPC, which did not name Linkedin in its report, said the matching of names gave rise to “data protection concerns, primarily the lawfulness, fairness and accuracy of the personal data processing”.

Linkedin yesterday said it was “pausing” the feature, but only for users in the EU. It planned to “re-evaluate its effectiveness” after “useful feedback”.

The site, which is owned by Microsoft, has nearly 600 million users.