LinkedIn beats "BrowserGate" lawsuits over scanning users' Chrome extensions
Not quite Watergate
Judge tosses lawsuits, says plaintiffs didn’t allege any real privacy violation.
LinkedIn headquarters in Sunnyvale, California in February 2020. Credit: Getty Images
LinkedIn beat two lawsuits over its practice of scanning users’ browser extensions, with a judge granting the Microsoft subsidiary’s motion to dismiss the cases. The users who sued LinkedIn failed to adequately allege that they have standing to sue because neither asserted that they “had browser extensions installed that conveyed private information to LinkedIn,” ruled Judge Vince Chhabria in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
In his ruling on Tuesday, Chhabria gave the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaints but said he doubts they can make a plausible case. “Given LinkedIn’s further arguments that users voluntarily download browser extensions, which by their nature intentionally expose data to websites, it seems unlikely that the plaintiffs will ever be able to...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to arstechnica.com. To see the full text click HERE
