LinkedIn beats “BrowserGate” lawsuits over scanning users’ Chrome extensions

LinkedIn 赢得“浏览器门”诉讼，被控扫描用户 Chrome 扩展程序

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. LinkedIn 在两起针对其扫描用户浏览器扩展程序的诉讼中胜诉，法官批准了这家微软子公司提出的驳回诉讼动议。美国加利福尼亚北区联邦地区法院法官文斯·查布里亚（Vince Chhabria）裁定，起诉 LinkedIn 的用户未能充分证明其拥有诉讼资格，因为双方均未声称自己“安装了向 LinkedIn 传输私人信息的浏览器扩展程序”。

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 allege a privacy violation, much less prevail at the end of the day,” Chhabria wrote. 在周二的裁决中，查布里亚允许原告修改诉状，但他表示怀疑他们能否提出合理的诉讼理由。查布里亚写道：“考虑到 LinkedIn 进一步辩称用户是自愿下载浏览器扩展程序的，而这些程序本质上就是为了向网站公开数据，原告似乎不太可能证明存在隐私侵犯，更不用说最终胜诉了。”

California residents Nicholas Farrell and Jeff Ganan separately filed class actions against LinkedIn in April, seeking to represent themselves and other LinkedIn users. Ganan’s attorney, J.R. Howell, said he is evaluating whether to bring the claims in a California state court, which has different requirements on standing, or to appeal the US district court ruling in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 加州居民尼古拉斯·法雷尔（Nicholas Farrell）和杰夫·加南（Jeff Ganan）于 4 月分别对 LinkedIn 提起集体诉讼，寻求代表他们自己及其他 LinkedIn 用户。加南的律师 J.R. 豪威尔（J.R. Howell）表示，他正在评估是向对诉讼资格有不同要求的加州州法院提起诉讼，还是向美国第九巡回上诉法院对该联邦地区法院的裁决提出上诉。

“The federal court determined that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the LinkedIn users’ claims,” Howell told Ars today. “The court did not adjudicate whether LinkedIn’s surveillance practices were lawful. The ruling is not a vindication of the mass surveillance program alleged in our complaint.” “联邦法院裁定其缺乏管辖权来审理 LinkedIn 用户的诉讼请求，”豪威尔今天告诉 Ars。“法院并未裁定 LinkedIn 的监控行为是否合法。该裁决并非为我们诉状中所指控的大规模监控计划进行辩护。”

“BrowserGate” stems from dispute over scraping

“浏览器门”源于抓取争议

As we wrote in April, the plaintiffs filed their lawsuits after a report alleged that “LinkedIn Is illegally searching your computer.” LinkedIn did not deny that it scans browsers to identify extensions and already disclosed in its privacy policy that it uses cookies and similar technologies to collect information about each user’s “web browser and add-ons.” 正如我们在 4 月份报道的那样，原告是在一份报告声称“LinkedIn 正在非法搜索你的电脑”后提起诉讼的。LinkedIn 并不否认其会扫描浏览器以识别扩展程序，并已在其隐私政策中披露，它使用 Cookie 和类似技术来收集有关每个用户“网络浏览器和插件”的信息。

The so-called “BrowserGate” report was issued by a German entity called Fairlinked, which describes itself as a trade association and advocacy group for commercial LinkedIn users. It appeared to be run by the same people behind Teamfluence, an Estonian software company that sued LinkedIn in Munich after its CEO was banned by LinkedIn. Howell, Ganan’s lawyer, also serves as counsel for Fairlinked in the US. 所谓的“浏览器门”报告由一家名为 Fairlinked 的德国实体发布，该实体自称为商业 LinkedIn 用户的行业协会和倡导组织。它似乎由 Teamfluence 背后的同一批人运营，这是一家爱沙尼亚软件公司，其首席执行官被 LinkedIn 封禁后曾在慕尼黑起诉过 LinkedIn。加南的律师豪威尔同时也是 Fairlinked 在美国的法律顾问。

In a June court filing, Howell wrote that “my investigative work with Fairlinked e.V. and Browsergate occurred before my office filed the Ganan complaint.” LinkedIn said in a motion to dismiss that it uses detection systems to identify the type of automated scraping and bot activity that Teamfluence was deploying. 在 6 月份的一份法庭文件中，豪威尔写道：“我与 Fairlinked e.V. 和 Browsergate 的调查工作发生在我办公室提交加南诉状之前。”LinkedIn 在驳回动议中表示，它使用检测系统来识别 Teamfluence 正在部署的那种自动化抓取和机器人活动。

LinkedIn told the court: Teamfluence, an Estonian platform, is one of those groups that traffics in scraping. It markets a Google Chrome browser plug-in designed to “[i]dentify 100% of your LinkedIn traffic.” LinkedIn caught it and banned its CEO from the platform, leading to a legal dispute in Germany. A German tribunal recently determined that “[t]he ‘Teamfluence’ software violates [LinkedIn’s User Agreement],” and that LinkedIn’s “suspending the Claimants’ user accounts is objectively justified overall and not arbitrary.” LinkedIn 向法院表示：爱沙尼亚平台 Teamfluence 是从事抓取活动的组织之一。它销售一款旨在“识别 100% LinkedIn 流量”的谷歌浏览器插件。LinkedIn 发现了这一点并封禁了其首席执行官，从而引发了德国的一场法律纠纷。德国法庭最近裁定，“‘Teamfluence’软件违反了[LinkedIn 用户协议]”，并且 LinkedIn “暂停原告用户账户在总体上是客观合理的，并非武断行为。”

Judge: Plaintiffs did not allege concrete harm

法官：原告未主张具体损害

After the German court order, the Teamfluence-linked group called Fairlinked emerged with the BrowserGate report, which attracted coverage on a number of tech news sites. “No surprise: the founder of Teamfluence sits on Fairlinked’s board,” LinkedIn’s motion said. “Having been caught for scraping, and held to have violated LinkedIn’s terms, he has now embarked on an international retaliation campaign by manufacturing a fake privacy controversy. But it is Teamfluence that is scraping data without consent.” Teamfluence’s CEO and founder is named Steven Morell. 在德国法院下达裁决后，与 Teamfluence 关联的 Fairlinked 组织发布了“浏览器门”报告，吸引了多家科技新闻网站的报道。LinkedIn 的动议称：“毫不奇怪：Teamfluence 的创始人是 Fairlinked 的董事会成员。在因抓取数据被抓并被认定违反 LinkedIn 条款后，他现在通过制造虚假的隐私争议，开启了一场国际报复行动。但实际上，未经许可抓取数据的正是 Teamfluence。”Teamfluence 的首席执行官兼创始人名为史蒂文·莫雷尔（Steven Morell）。

Chhabria’s ruling said that neither Farrell nor Ganan “alleges that they, specifically, had browser extensions installed that conveyed private information to LinkedIn. Ganan never alleges that he had any extensions installed at all. Farrell alleges that he ‘has long had several browser extensions installed,’ and that, in general, browser extensions ‘often reveal sensitive private information about its users,’ but he never alleges that one of his own browser extensions revealed such information.” 查布里亚的裁决指出，法雷尔和加南都没有“声称他们个人安装了向 LinkedIn 传输私人信息的浏览器扩展程序。加南根本没有声称他安装了任何扩展程序。法雷尔声称他‘长期安装了几个浏览器扩展程序’，并且通常情况下，浏览器扩展程序‘经常泄露用户的敏感私人信息’，但他从未声称他自己的某个浏览器扩展程序泄露了此类信息。”

The judge said the “allegations are insufficient to confer standing because only ‘those plaintiffs who have been concretely harmed by a defendant’s statutory violation may sue that private defendant over that violation in federal court.’ Identifying categories of private information that hypothetically could be revealed by surveillance of browser extensions is not enough to allege standing ‘particularized to a plaintiff’s circumstances,’” as precedent requires. 法官表示，这些“指控不足以赋予诉讼资格，因为只有‘那些因被告违反法规而受到具体损害的原告，才能在联邦法院起诉该私人被告’。正如先例所要求的那样，仅识别出通过监控浏览器扩展程序可能泄露的私人信息类别，不足以主张‘针对原告具体情况的’诉讼资格。”

Ganan argued in a filing that the harm is “the unpermitted probe, not its yield,” but Chhabria wrote that “a plaintiff must identify ’embarrassing, invasive, or otherwise private information collected by’ the defendant.” 加南在一份文件中辩称，损害是“未经许可的探测，而不是探测的结果”，但查布里亚写道，“原告必须指出被告收集的‘令人尴尬、具有侵入性或其他私人信息’。”

Lawyer vows to continue case

律师誓言继续诉讼

LinkedIn’s motion to dismiss said it uses detection tools “to identify whether a visitor to the platform is operating a browser extension that could threaten the security and integrity of the platform,” and that “LinkedIn detects information that browser extensions openly provide to all websites in order to interact with them. The information is publicly available and in no way private. And LinkedIn’s right to detect this information is disclosed and agreed to by all its members. So is LinkedIn’s right to use security-focused vendors to detect and prevent potential abuse.” LinkedIn 的驳回动议称，它使用检测工具“来识别平台访问者是否正在运行可能威胁平台安全和完整性的浏览器扩展程序”，并且“LinkedIn 检测的是浏览器扩展程序为了与网站交互而公开提供给所有网站的信息。这些信息是公开的，绝非私人信息。LinkedIn 检测此信息的权利已向所有成员披露并经其同意。LinkedIn 使用专注于安全的供应商来检测和防止潜在滥用的权利也是如此。”

LinkedIn said that some Chrome browser extensions extract job listings and related data from the company’s website, and that LinkedIn’s terms prohibit extensions that scrape or copy data. LinkedIn 表示，一些 Chrome 浏览器扩展程序会从其网站提取职位列表及相关数据，而 LinkedIn 的条款禁止抓取或复制数据的扩展程序。