Check your email: LinkedIn might owe you a lot of money. Actually, too many emails is exactly why the social media site is paying out $13 million to users. If you were a member of the site between September 17, 2011 and October 31, 2014 and you used the "Add Connections" feature, you might be eligible to receive up to $1,500 for putting up with that annoyance.
The class-action lawsuit, Perkins v. LinkedIn, brought by users in California in 2013, argued that LinkedIn went too far when it sent multiple emails on behalf of users, without their clear knowledge. When you sign up for an account, LinkedIn offers to send a connection request to all your contacts. What it didn't make clear, the lawsuit argued, is the two follow-up emails that were sent if your contact didn't respond to the first email.
Fortune reports that LinkedIn tried to get the suit thrown out, but U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh upheld most of the suit, writing that the “the second and third endorsement emails could injure users’ reputations by allowing contacts to think that the users are the types of people who spam their contacts.”
As Quartz points out, it's interesting that LinkedIn sent the settlement announcement on a Friday afternoon, a time when many people are less likely to be checking email. No doubt the master marketers there have tons of data on user email preferences and chose that time in hopes that many people would miss it. As Quartz's Mike Murphy jokes, the real question is: Will LinkedIn send a follow-up email?
For more details on how to file a claim, visit the settlement website.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT