Microsoft Gets Second Shot at Banning hiQ from Scraping LinkedIn User Data
The U.S. Supreme Court has granted LinkedIn another legal option to try to prevent rival hiQ Labs from scraping public information from its user profiles, something the Microsoft-owned professional networking platform has claimed is a violation of user privacy and a misuse of its data.
The court has thrown out a case previously ruled in hiQ Labs’ favor and sent it back down to the lower court for further consideration. The court based its decision on its June 4 ruling in the case Van Buren v. United States that limited the type of conduct that can be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), which is also at the heart of the LinkedIn case.
The decision effectively vacates a 2019 ruling by the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals barring LinkedIn from prohibiting hiQ access to publicly available information of LinkedIn’s users, bouncing the case back to the lower court to hear again.
Source: Microsoft Gets Second Shot at Banning hiQ from Scraping LinkedIn User Data | Threatpost
