If you are one of the 500 million users of LinkedIn, then you may want to stop what you’re doing and read this.
According to the company themselves, there is another business out there that is collecting data from your profiles and informing you higher-ups in your job that you may be something of a “flight risk”.
This other business, a recruitment company called hiQ Labs, are currently suing LinkedIn to ensure that updating your profile on there remains public information.
In an email to business website Quartz, Mark Weidick, the CEO of hiQ Labs stated:
“We understand LinkedIn wants to get into our business, and that’s fine. But LinkedIn is trying to illegally force out a smaller competitor so that they can have the business for themselves, plain and simple.”
However, LinkedIn have told the courts (via The Wall Street Journal) that:
“If LinkedIn members knew that hiQ was accessing and collecting their data in this manner, many would not update their profiles.”
So for now, if you have a profile on LinkedIn, already have a job and are updating that profile, your bosses could be informed that you are doing it to gear up and start looking for a new job.
