The occurrence of fake accounts has long been a problem that almost all social networks have to deal with. These fake accounts are often used for a variety of undesirable actions such as proliferating spam and misleading people. However, it seems that LinkedIn has had enough. According to a recent announcement, the company is taking legal action against parties involved in setting up and using fake accounts. The only complication is that the company currently doesn't have a clear idea who they're suing.
These fake accounts are created using a process known as data scraping. Since data scraping is a clear violation of LinkedIn's EULA, the company has finally had enough. In addition to being in violation of the social network's terms and conditions, data scraping is also illegal under the law. Aside from adding to the security risks LinkedIn faces, these fake accounts also cause additional burdens on the social network's IT infrastructure.
"It undermines the integrity and effectiveness of LinkedIn's professional network by polluting it with thousands of fake member profiles," LinkedIn said in its complaint.
While there are many methods used by unscrupulous individuals in the process of data scraping, it also appears that Amazon may be an unwitting participant in the problem. LinkedIn has stated that the parties involved in creating many of the fake accounts on the social network did so by using Amazon's EC2 cloud service. It seems that the people behind many of the fake accounts used Amazon's EC2 to rent the resources needed for data scraping. Due to the considerable computing power that Amazon's virtual computers can bring to the fore, the data scrapers could run their bots to glean the necessary data from LinkedIn servers.
The lawsuit was recently filed in a San Francisco court against the "John Does" involved in the operation. LinkedIn will be asking the court to order the currently unknown defendants to pay the company for their violations of current hacking laws. The company is hoping that the lawsuit will help them speed up the process of determining the identity of the individuals behind the data scraping. With the court's backing, LinkedIn may be able to backtrack the IP addresses of the perpetuators who have been using Amazon's EC2 services to conduct their operations.
