Random Talk

[Uncle]

Next we'll just scrape their contact details from LinkedIn because it's all public and they're all connected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn

hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., 938 F.3d 985 (9th Cir. 2019), was a United States Ninth Circuit case about web scraping. hiQ is a small data analytics company that used automated bots to scrape information from public LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn used legal means to prevent this. hiQ Labs brought a case against LinkedIn in a district court, seeking an injunction against these means, which was granted. LinkedIn appealed. The 9th Circuit affirmed the district court's preliminary injunction, preventing LinkedIn from denying the plaintiff, hiQ Labs, from accessing LinkedIn's publicly available LinkedIn member profiles. However, after further appeal in another court, hiQ was found to be in breach of LinkedIn's terms, and there was a settlement.

The 9th Circuit ruled that hiQ had the right to do web scraping.[1][2][3] However, the Supreme Court, based on its Van Buren v. United States decision,[4] vacated the decision and remanded the case for further review in June 2021. In a second ruling in April 2022 the Ninth Circuit affirmed its decision.[5][6] In November 2022 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that hiQ had breached LinkedIn's User Agreement and a settlement agreement was reached between the two parties.[7]