LinkedIn Sues ProAPIs: Millions of Fake Accounts Used to Scrape & Sell User Data — Privacy at Risk

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LinkedIn Sues ProAPIs & CEO Rahmat Alam — What Happened

Author: Tech Updates • Date: Oct 8, 2025 • Category: Privacy & Law

Quick summary (bullet points)

• LinkedIn filed a lawsuit against ProAPIs and its CEO Rahmat Alam for creating millions of fake LinkedIn accounts used to scrape and sell platform data.
• Defendants allegedly offered real-time, detailed LinkedIn data via a rented scraping service — charging up to $15,000/month.
• ProAPIs reportedly used an automated fake account network that registered hundreds or thousands of new accounts daily to evade LinkedIn’s defenses.
• Although LinkedIn detects and blocks many fake accounts within hours, each account can harvest hundreds of profiles in that time.
• LinkedIn alleges violations of its User Agreement and multiple state and federal laws related to unauthorized access and misuse of trademarks.
• LinkedIn says this activity overloads servers, generates millions of requests, and poses growing privacy and AI-related risks.

Key takeaways / Why this matters

• Large-scale scraping threatens user privacy and platform integrity.
• Companies selling scraped data for profit can face legal action and injunctions.
• Automated fake-account networks are an arms race: detection vs. rapid re-creation of accounts.
• If proven, the case sets precedent for enforcement against data brokers that sell real-time social graph data to third parties, including AI firms.

Detailed article summary

Allegations: LinkedIn claims ProAPIs and CEO Rahmat Alam operated a "fake account mill" numbering in the millions to log into LinkedIn and scrape member, company, and school data, along with posts, reactions and comments. They allegedly used the accounts to build a commercial scraping product rented out to third parties.

How the scraping network worked (allegedly)

• Automated creation of fake LinkedIn member accounts at scale (hundreds to thousands per day).
• Each new account logs in and scrapes hundreds of profiles before being detected and restricted by LinkedIn.
• Operators would then spin up many more accounts daily to maintain continuous scraping capacity.
• Scraped data was packaged and offered as a real-time feed or rented service — high-tier plans reportedly reaching $15,000/month.

Legal and contractual violations LinkedIn asserts

• Violation of LinkedIn's User Agreement: scraping, copying data, creating false identities, and misrepresenting affiliation.
• Unauthorized access laws: LinkedIn says defendants circumvented technical barriers and engaged in conduct prohibited by state and federal statutes.
• Trademark misuse: defendants allegedly used LinkedIn’s trademarks to imply endorsement or partnership.

Operational impacts and risks

• Server overload and excessive automated requests far beyond normal human usage.
• Privacy harm: harvesting member-only data and non-public information increases risk to individuals.
• AI implications: scraped datasets can fuel AI models and create new privacy and misuse vectors.

LinkedIn’s response and goals

LinkedIn has sued to stop the illegal scraping, protect platform integrity, and prevent misuse of members’ professional identities. The platform emphasises it uses both technical and human resources to detect fake accounts and block scraping operations.

What to watch next

• Legal outcomes: injunctions, damages, and whether courts impose broad prohibitions on scraping services.
• Regulatory attention: potential policy reactions or stronger enforcement of anti-scraping laws.
• Industry changes: platforms may accelerate defensive measures (CAPTCHAs, more aggressive fingerprinting, rate-limits).

For journalists or readers: this summary is based on LinkedIn's public complaint and outlines the core allegations. If you are a developer or company that relies on scraped datasets, review your data sources and legal compliance now.

Tags: LinkedIn, Data scraping, Privacy, Lawsuit