US Supreme Court Bars hiQ From Collecting LinkedIn Public Data Over Privacy Concerns: Reuters
The U.S. Supreme Court gave Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ: MSFT) LinkedIn another opportunity to prevent hiQ Labs Inc from collecting personal data from the professional networking platform's public profiles that allegedly threatened user privacy, Reuters reported.
LinkedIn had voiced concerns over hiQ's software bots' possible data harvesting on a massive scale. LinkedIn also alleged that some of its public users had been scraped and posted for sale.
The justices suspended a lower court ruling that prevented LinkedIn from rejecting hiQ access to LinkedIn members' publicly available data.
LinkedIn warned hiQ in 2017 to stop scraping LinkedIn's public profiles or face the consequences under the anti-hacking law.
hiQ used the data for products that analyze employee skills or alert employers while looking for a new job. LinkedIn issued the threat while introducing a similar service to hiQ's, added hiQ.
hiQ prosecuted LinkedIn in federal court for alleged anti-competitive conduct.
hiQ sought to prevent a small group of powerful companies from controlling publicly available data. A federal judge in 2017 granted its request for a preliminary ruling against LinkedIn.
Price action: MSFT shares closed higher by 0.78% at $259.89 on Monday.
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