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LinkedIn identifies company that used bots to scrape profile data

Professional networking service LinkedIn has named the company it filed a lawsuit against in January for creating fake profiles, connecting with real users, and “scraping” data from their profiles.

Since the defendants in the lawsuit were unknown, they were previously referred to as “Doe Defendants” in court documents. However, an amended complaint filed March 27 identifies San Francisco-based recruiting business, HiringSolved, and its founder, Shon Burton, as defendants.

According to the complaint, HiringSolved sold subscriptions to the stolen LinkedIn data, which was siphoned from user profiles since May 2013, “at rates ranging from $199 to $799” per month.

The social networking service is seeking damages and an injunction against the company and its founder, based on its claims that they violated its terms of agreement, as well as copyright and hacking laws.

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