7 ms·

Can A Company Keep An Employee's LinkedIn Account After Employment Ends?

30 points by llambda 15y ago

markokocic 15y ago
Reading only the title I would answer: "Of course not", but there are more questions to this. Why the original owner allowed company to use his own account? By the fact that he handed down password and permissions to the company to operate this account, one could argue that this is not his own account anymore. However, whoever wins this suit, the right thing to do for LinkedIn would be to just disable/delete the account for misuse. The fact that multiple people inside a company had been sharing the same account, changing person name, picture and position is a bit fishy, and potentially a scam against other linkedin users. I wouldn't be happy to connect to "John D" and write recommendation to him, only to find out that few weeks later this is some "Alex F" I don't know.
- corin_ 15y ago
  By the fact that he handed down password and permissions to the company to operate this account, one could argue that this is not his own account anymore. I've given colleagues the keys to my appartment, the password to my privately-owned laptop, ipad and phone... Sometimes these weren't work-related and just happened to involve colleagues, other times they were 100% work related. I don't believe that giving a colleague access to something of yours indicates it is owned by the company. Hell, why not argue the other way, the company gave me access to all their servers so don't they sort of belong to me now?
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Yes, but did you give them the keys so that they could hold a meeting with investors in your living room? It seems that she meant for others in the company to use the account as a means of interacting with clients, etc. I think the lawsuit is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy taking the plaintiff's side in a mock trial.
    - corin_ 15y ago
      No I didn't, but if I had done that would it make a difference? It's certainly something I would do if the situation came up (and if I didn't live just down the road from our offices). Certainly I've given access to my blackberry to answer calls from clients before, I still claim I fully own this phone.
      - pavel_lishin 15y ago
        > No I didn't, but if I had done that would it make a difference? I think it makes a difference. As an admittedly weak analogy (only one cup of tea so far this morning), I can write off a dinner as a business expense if I dine with a client, but I can't if I'm just taking my family out and talking about business.
        corin_ 15y ago
        I can expense a meal I buy for a colleague and myself too, not just if a third party client is involved. So imagine our offices are busy as hell and there isn't room for one of my colleagues to meet with a client who is coming in. I say "take my keys, there's scotch in the usual place, take him into the living room". Maybe I'd even expense the bottle of scotch afterwards. Would you now argue that the company owns my home because it was used in this way?
        pavel_lishin 15y ago
        Depends. If you were the CEO, and your small house faced a busy street, and had the business name plastered all over it, and you made a habit of inviting customers, coworkers, clients, business partners, etc. - perhaps! (Again, in a mock trial sort of situation, not in one where I'd actually potentially make you homeless.) But also IANAL, so I'm sure there must be a precedent for this sort of thing, both online and real-state wise.
        nknight 15y ago
        You're way off. Possession, contrary to popular cliché, is not 9/10ths of the law. Property, real or personal, has an owner. In the case of real estate and certain other property (such as a car), that ownership is usually even on record with the county or state. Short of actual abandonment, which is a narrow, and generally hard-to-prove case, ownership of property in any form cannot be transferred without some sort of contract. Although some property might be transferred by oral contract, that still requires evidence that a contract was formed, which requires a "meeting of the minds". You actually have to prove there was an intent by the owner to transfer the property. That's a high bar to clear, especially with something as inherently personal as a linkedin account, where any reasonable person would assume the account belongs to the individual, not the corporation.
- talmand 15y ago
  I would disagree on the ownership question. Just because someone allows access to the account doesn't mean the ownership of the account is transferred. It would be as if you gave me keys to your house for the weekend and then I claim ownership of your house. But one of the comments in the story has the answer. If the issue at hand are the connections in the account, then why not just hand over a copy of the list of connections? Granted, the company would then have to ask everyone on that list to connect with the new account, which they may not be inclined to do. To me, it would depend on who created the account. If the company created it for the use of the employee it belongs to the company. If the employee created it for their use, whether it was related to their job or not, it belongs to the employee.
  - caseysoftware 15y ago
    I think where it gets muddy is multiple people working on and/or using the account on company time. If maintaining the account, updating contacts, etc was part of their regular job, this argument starts to make sense. That would be online with working on side projects on the job or with company resources. If it was a "I'm too busy, here.. log in and grab his email" sort of thing, that seems more in line with the "you can use my phone" analogy. Either way, I'm interested to see what their argument is and how it shakes out as this could impact quite a few other things.
- biot 15y ago
  The only valid reason I can think of to share your LinkedIn credentials is to manage LinkedIn ads. Though ideally that should be done from a dedicated account.
mattdeboard 15y ago
The one resource the world will never run short on is total morons, as evidenced by this story.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
furyg3 15y ago
Can't LinkedIn clarify this in their terms of service? As in, only individuals (not organizations) are allowed to create personal accounts, and LinkedIn will treat the person who crated the account as the owner, it is non-transferable, and masquerading as another individual is prohibited? Etc, etc.
- michaelfeathers 15y ago
  It would make sense. Airlines had to deal with this issue years ago when frequent flyer programs were introduced. Companies wanted to get the miles and points of their employees when they traveled for business. Airlines pushed a hard line and said that the miles and points are associated with the person who flies, not the company that pays for the ticket.
pella 15y ago
"Here’s a scenario for you: Your boss encourages you to sign up for a Linkedin profile which you start to actively use in your work as well as socially. The time comes when you and your company part ways for whatever reason. Your boss now says that the account that was set up belongs to the company and you have to give it up. Does it sound like an unlikely scenario? It has happened to lots of people out there and it will happen again" http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/content/social-networking-and-job-change-7-tips-keeping-your-contacts http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/content/social-networking-...
- salemh 15y ago
  A lot of staffing firms are suing former employee's over such. On my own research, you are "safer" if you never allow the company to pay for premium options, you had the LN account prior to employment, and honor your non-compete post-employment. All very tricky. I no longer use my LN for staffing to avoid this. http://takethisjobnshoveitblog.com/2010/06/01/employee-sued-claiming-activity-on-linkedin-was-violation-of-non-compete-agreement/ http://takethisjobnshoveitblog.com/2010/06/01/employee-sued-... http://dailyblogma.com/featured/employers-battle-workers-linkedin-contacts/ http://dailyblogma.com/featured/employers-battle-workers-lin... In Minnesota, the IT staffing firm TEKsystems Inc. is suing three former employees and their new employer for allegedly violating non-competition, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements. What did the employees do? They continued to use their LinkedIn accounts, which they had set up while working at TEKsystems, after they had left the company. The lawsuit alleges the employees used LinkedIn to communicate with TEKsystems clients and contractors in violation of their departure agreements. http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/12/30/think-going-after-a-twitter-account-is-bad-this-company-wants-employee-linkedin-accounts/ http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/12/30/think-going-aft... A former Sr contract recruiter with Microsoft was told she had to give up her LN account by their HR department (cannot find at the moment) after leaving she told them no, given she already had the LN account.
DanBC 15y ago
Siscom[1] do "information management". Their page on "end user computing" solutions seems apt: > For many businesses and governments, the end-user computing environment has evolved in an ad-hoc fashion. Many organizations need to refresh and simplify their environments to bring down the cost of management, improve availability and reduce time to market for new capabilities. In addition, companies are looking to improve end-user productivity by upgrading their desktop and messaging infrastructures to support newly available mobile and collaboration solutions. For these organizations, piecemeal and one-off initiatives cannot produce sufficient business value; they need a more transformational approach to their end-user computing environments. > SISCOM works closely with organizations to fill those gaps in experience, and to provide the methods, tools and tactics to achieve the highest performance through a transformed end-user computing environment: all at lower cost, and with greater business payback. People make mistakes, but come on. [1] (http://www.siscom.com.sa/ http://www.siscom.com.sa/)
pasbesoin 15y ago
The first rule of working for an organization: You are not the organization. This goes for your time, your resources, your accounts. People blur this line for various reasons. They're youthful and "motivated"/optimistic. They substitute the organization to lesser or greater extent for a personal life. The organization pressures them to co-opt their personal life in varying manners and degrees. If an organization wants an account, they should start one. If that's not within the terms of service of the provider, that's the organization's problem. If you work for an organization that continues to pressure you -- directly or indirectly -- to blur these lines, it's time to start planning for and heading for the exit. I used to think my "detached" colleagues were unmotivated. In some cases, perhaps; but in others, I've come to see they were perhaps simply wiser and/or more experienced. (Meaning, with the ones who otherwise demonstrated significant intelligence and ability.) When you work for someone else, it's your job. You may -- hopefully do -- greatly enjoy it. Nonetheless, don't forget to understand, demarcate, and respect its boundary -- and your own.
- r00fus 15y ago
  Work ethics aside, this situation poses a problem for LinkedIn, since the idea that a company can edit their employees' accounts or create fictitious people is counter to the whole idea of identity-based social networks (quite different than FB or G+ company pages). Ultimately this points to a problem for social networks, in that "your" page on a social network really isn't "owned" by you, it's just your dossier that you have some rights to edit/control, but is really the property of site/network that hosts it. This won't change unless regulation/legislation/legal precedent creates real legal protections. Given how much of our lives are "on the Internet" these days, Cyberethics [1] is a growing issue. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberethics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberethics
  - pasbesoin 15y ago
    I'm suddenly put in mind of the "corporate personhood" debate that's picked up once again in the U.S., recently. Who is a "person", and what right or permission do or don't they have to be an account holder? As for your point, it's a reason I'm moving back to self-hosting. I've had enough of "share-cropping".
algoshift 15y ago
I've had the experience of having company contact data stolen via a Linkedin account. I hired a salesman for one of my businesses. He had limited sales experience but I was willing to train. His Linkedin account had maybe on or two dozen contacts. I watched as he systematically added contacts to the account over a year. Nearly all of these contacts came out of our business activities. By the end of the year he was in the hundreds of contacts. The relationship wasn't working out and I had to let him go. He went to work for a competitor. Not only was he armed with the knowledge from this one year "training program" but now he had a who's-who of the industry in his LinkedIn account. Business can really suck sometimes. Some of these contacts were developed after non-trivial financial and monetary investments. For example, we were spending about $250K per year going to tradeshows. Some of these contacts came from relationships built over making contact with people repeated times at various tradeshows spread over several years. In some cases the tradeshow activity was followed-up by in-person visits at the customer site. One could easily argue that some of the contacts easily cost tens of thousands of dollars to develop. Who owns these contacts and relationships? I think it is very clear that the business does. I also understand that this is not a trivial problem. These days it is nearly impossible to control the exodus of internal data, be it contacts, code or design data (electronics, mechanical). One personal Dropbox account and an employee can move hard drives worth of data out of your business. Agreements not to do so are only worth the paper they are on. In the end it might just be a matter of personal morals and ethics.
- sk5t 15y ago
  Why do you think it's "clear" that the business owns the contacts and relationships? Contacts and relationships form the basis of a salesman's job, much as language and API expertise are the basis of a programmer's job. You may invest considerably in a programmer's training, only to watch him leave for a competitor, but you will have a difficult time claiming ownership of his knowledge and experience. I think the lesson is that, from a business perspective, you need to guard access to key contacts and companies where possible, if the likely departure of an employee who knows them will cause the business undue hardship. How else would you propose to structure a job where the employee forfeits relationships upon separation? (And how would you get any decent salesperson to accept such a job?)
CodeCube 15y ago
The problem here is when you allow an employee's linkedin account to be your CRM.
ndefinite 15y ago
As far as the legality goes I would assume LinkedIn gets to decide. It's a 3rd party service, I haven't read their TOS but I'm assuming they own everything and merely permit users to use their service. Sure there are terms but legal ownership is LinkedIn's. Curious to see how LinkedIn handles the account that's actually been taken over and replaced with a new name. I doubt the idea of one person building a network and then selling the packaged contacts to another person fits at all with LinkedIn's plans for the future. The last think LinkedIn needs right now is people to start goldfarming.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

30 points by llambda 15y ago

Reading only the title I would answer: "Of course not", but there are more questions to this. Why the original owner allowed company to use his own account? By the fact that he handed down password and permissions to the company to operate this account, one could argue that this is not his own account anymore. However, whoever wins this suit, the right thing to do for LinkedIn would be to just disable/delete the account for misuse. The fact that multiple people inside a company had been sharing the same account, changing person name, picture and position is a bit fishy, and potentially a scam against other linkedin users. I wouldn't be happy to connect to "John D" and write recommendation to him, only to find out that few weeks later this is some "Alex F" I don't know.

corin_ 15y ago
By the fact that he handed down password and permissions to the company to operate this account, one could argue that this is not his own account anymore. I've given colleagues the keys to my appartment, the password to my privately-owned laptop, ipad and phone... Sometimes these weren't work-related and just happened to involve colleagues, other times they were 100% work related. I don't believe that giving a colleague access to something of yours indicates it is owned by the company. Hell, why not argue the other way, the company gave me access to all their servers so don't they sort of belong to me now?
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Yes, but did you give them the keys so that they could hold a meeting with investors in your living room? It seems that she meant for others in the company to use the account as a means of interacting with clients, etc. I think the lawsuit is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy taking the plaintiff's side in a mock trial.
  - corin_ 15y ago
    No I didn't, but if I had done that would it make a difference? It's certainly something I would do if the situation came up (and if I didn't live just down the road from our offices). Certainly I've given access to my blackberry to answer calls from clients before, I still claim I fully own this phone.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      > No I didn't, but if I had done that would it make a difference? I think it makes a difference. As an admittedly weak analogy (only one cup of tea so far this morning), I can write off a dinner as a business expense if I dine with a client, but I can't if I'm just taking my family out and talking about business.
      - corin_ 15y ago
        I can expense a meal I buy for a colleague and myself too, not just if a third party client is involved. So imagine our offices are busy as hell and there isn't room for one of my colleagues to meet with a client who is coming in. I say "take my keys, there's scotch in the usual place, take him into the living room". Maybe I'd even expense the bottle of scotch afterwards. Would you now argue that the company owns my home because it was used in this way?
        pavel_lishin 15y ago
        Depends. If you were the CEO, and your small house faced a busy street, and had the business name plastered all over it, and you made a habit of inviting customers, coworkers, clients, business partners, etc. - perhaps! (Again, in a mock trial sort of situation, not in one where I'd actually potentially make you homeless.) But also IANAL, so I'm sure there must be a precedent for this sort of thing, both online and real-state wise.
        nknight 15y ago
        You're way off. Possession, contrary to popular cliché, is not 9/10ths of the law. Property, real or personal, has an owner. In the case of real estate and certain other property (such as a car), that ownership is usually even on record with the county or state. Short of actual abandonment, which is a narrow, and generally hard-to-prove case, ownership of property in any form cannot be transferred without some sort of contract. Although some property might be transferred by oral contract, that still requires evidence that a contract was formed, which requires a "meeting of the minds". You actually have to prove there was an intent by the owner to transfer the property. That's a high bar to clear, especially with something as inherently personal as a linkedin account, where any reasonable person would assume the account belongs to the individual, not the corporation.
talmand 15y ago
I would disagree on the ownership question. Just because someone allows access to the account doesn't mean the ownership of the account is transferred. It would be as if you gave me keys to your house for the weekend and then I claim ownership of your house. But one of the comments in the story has the answer. If the issue at hand are the connections in the account, then why not just hand over a copy of the list of connections? Granted, the company would then have to ask everyone on that list to connect with the new account, which they may not be inclined to do. To me, it would depend on who created the account. If the company created it for the use of the employee it belongs to the company. If the employee created it for their use, whether it was related to their job or not, it belongs to the employee.
- caseysoftware 15y ago
  I think where it gets muddy is multiple people working on and/or using the account on company time. If maintaining the account, updating contacts, etc was part of their regular job, this argument starts to make sense. That would be online with working on side projects on the job or with company resources. If it was a "I'm too busy, here.. log in and grab his email" sort of thing, that seems more in line with the "you can use my phone" analogy. Either way, I'm interested to see what their argument is and how it shakes out as this could impact quite a few other things.
biot 15y ago
The only valid reason I can think of to share your LinkedIn credentials is to manage LinkedIn ads. Though ideally that should be done from a dedicated account.

mattdeboard 15y ago

The one resource the world will never run short on is total morons, as evidenced by this story.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

furyg3 15y ago

Can't LinkedIn clarify this in their terms of service? As in, only individuals (not organizations) are allowed to create personal accounts, and LinkedIn will treat the person who crated the account as the owner, it is non-transferable, and masquerading as another individual is prohibited? Etc, etc.

michaelfeathers 15y ago
It would make sense. Airlines had to deal with this issue years ago when frequent flyer programs were introduced. Companies wanted to get the miles and points of their employees when they traveled for business. Airlines pushed a hard line and said that the miles and points are associated with the person who flies, not the company that pays for the ticket.

pella 15y ago

"Here’s a scenario for you: Your boss encourages you to sign up for a Linkedin profile which you start to actively use in your work as well as socially. The time comes when you and your company part ways for whatever reason. Your boss now says that the account that was set up belongs to the company and you have to give it up. Does it sound like an unlikely scenario? It has happened to lots of people out there and it will happen again" http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/content/social-networking-and-job-change-7-tips-keeping-your-contacts http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/content/social-networking-...

salemh 15y ago
A lot of staffing firms are suing former employee's over such. On my own research, you are "safer" if you never allow the company to pay for premium options, you had the LN account prior to employment, and honor your non-compete post-employment. All very tricky. I no longer use my LN for staffing to avoid this. http://takethisjobnshoveitblog.com/2010/06/01/employee-sued-claiming-activity-on-linkedin-was-violation-of-non-compete-agreement/ http://takethisjobnshoveitblog.com/2010/06/01/employee-sued-... http://dailyblogma.com/featured/employers-battle-workers-linkedin-contacts/ http://dailyblogma.com/featured/employers-battle-workers-lin... In Minnesota, the IT staffing firm TEKsystems Inc. is suing three former employees and their new employer for allegedly violating non-competition, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements. What did the employees do? They continued to use their LinkedIn accounts, which they had set up while working at TEKsystems, after they had left the company. The lawsuit alleges the employees used LinkedIn to communicate with TEKsystems clients and contractors in violation of their departure agreements. http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/12/30/think-going-after-a-twitter-account-is-bad-this-company-wants-employee-linkedin-accounts/ http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/12/30/think-going-aft... A former Sr contract recruiter with Microsoft was told she had to give up her LN account by their HR department (cannot find at the moment) after leaving she told them no, given she already had the LN account.

DanBC 15y ago

Siscom[1] do "information management". Their page on "end user computing" solutions seems apt: > For many businesses and governments, the end-user computing environment has evolved in an ad-hoc fashion. Many organizations need to refresh and simplify their environments to bring down the cost of management, improve availability and reduce time to market for new capabilities. In addition, companies are looking to improve end-user productivity by upgrading their desktop and messaging infrastructures to support newly available mobile and collaboration solutions. For these organizations, piecemeal and one-off initiatives cannot produce sufficient business value; they need a more transformational approach to their end-user computing environments. > SISCOM works closely with organizations to fill those gaps in experience, and to provide the methods, tools and tactics to achieve the highest performance through a transformed end-user computing environment: all at lower cost, and with greater business payback. People make mistakes, but come on. [1] (http://www.siscom.com.sa/ http://www.siscom.com.sa/)

pasbesoin 15y ago

The first rule of working for an organization: You are not the organization. This goes for your time, your resources, your accounts. People blur this line for various reasons. They're youthful and "motivated"/optimistic. They substitute the organization to lesser or greater extent for a personal life. The organization pressures them to co-opt their personal life in varying manners and degrees. If an organization wants an account, they should start one. If that's not within the terms of service of the provider, that's the organization's problem. If you work for an organization that continues to pressure you -- directly or indirectly -- to blur these lines, it's time to start planning for and heading for the exit. I used to think my "detached" colleagues were unmotivated. In some cases, perhaps; but in others, I've come to see they were perhaps simply wiser and/or more experienced. (Meaning, with the ones who otherwise demonstrated significant intelligence and ability.) When you work for someone else, it's your job. You may -- hopefully do -- greatly enjoy it. Nonetheless, don't forget to understand, demarcate, and respect its boundary -- and your own.

r00fus 15y ago
Work ethics aside, this situation poses a problem for LinkedIn, since the idea that a company can edit their employees' accounts or create fictitious people is counter to the whole idea of identity-based social networks (quite different than FB or G+ company pages). Ultimately this points to a problem for social networks, in that "your" page on a social network really isn't "owned" by you, it's just your dossier that you have some rights to edit/control, but is really the property of site/network that hosts it. This won't change unless regulation/legislation/legal precedent creates real legal protections. Given how much of our lives are "on the Internet" these days, Cyberethics [1] is a growing issue. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberethics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberethics
- pasbesoin 15y ago
  I'm suddenly put in mind of the "corporate personhood" debate that's picked up once again in the U.S., recently. Who is a "person", and what right or permission do or don't they have to be an account holder? As for your point, it's a reason I'm moving back to self-hosting. I've had enough of "share-cropping".

algoshift 15y ago

I've had the experience of having company contact data stolen via a Linkedin account. I hired a salesman for one of my businesses. He had limited sales experience but I was willing to train. His Linkedin account had maybe on or two dozen contacts. I watched as he systematically added contacts to the account over a year. Nearly all of these contacts came out of our business activities. By the end of the year he was in the hundreds of contacts. The relationship wasn't working out and I had to let him go. He went to work for a competitor. Not only was he armed with the knowledge from this one year "training program" but now he had a who's-who of the industry in his LinkedIn account. Business can really suck sometimes. Some of these contacts were developed after non-trivial financial and monetary investments. For example, we were spending about $250K per year going to tradeshows. Some of these contacts came from relationships built over making contact with people repeated times at various tradeshows spread over several years. In some cases the tradeshow activity was followed-up by in-person visits at the customer site. One could easily argue that some of the contacts easily cost tens of thousands of dollars to develop. Who owns these contacts and relationships? I think it is very clear that the business does. I also understand that this is not a trivial problem. These days it is nearly impossible to control the exodus of internal data, be it contacts, code or design data (electronics, mechanical). One personal Dropbox account and an employee can move hard drives worth of data out of your business. Agreements not to do so are only worth the paper they are on. In the end it might just be a matter of personal morals and ethics.

sk5t 15y ago
Why do you think it's "clear" that the business owns the contacts and relationships? Contacts and relationships form the basis of a salesman's job, much as language and API expertise are the basis of a programmer's job. You may invest considerably in a programmer's training, only to watch him leave for a competitor, but you will have a difficult time claiming ownership of his knowledge and experience. I think the lesson is that, from a business perspective, you need to guard access to key contacts and companies where possible, if the likely departure of an employee who knows them will cause the business undue hardship. How else would you propose to structure a job where the employee forfeits relationships upon separation? (And how would you get any decent salesperson to accept such a job?)

CodeCube 15y ago

The problem here is when you allow an employee's linkedin account to be your CRM.

ndefinite 15y ago

As far as the legality goes I would assume LinkedIn gets to decide. It's a 3rd party service, I haven't read their TOS but I'm assuming they own everything and merely permit users to use their service. Sure there are terms but legal ownership is LinkedIn's. Curious to see how LinkedIn handles the account that's actually been taken over and replaced with a new name. I doubt the idea of one person building a network and then selling the packaged contacts to another person fits at all with LinkedIn's plans for the future. The last think LinkedIn needs right now is people to start goldfarming.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]