However a LinkedIn spokesman told us there is an algorithm involved in matching members to media articles - which he said is based on technology LinkedIn acquired when it bought machine learning startup Newsle back in 2014. “It was clear from the complaints that matching by name only was insufficient, giving rise to data protection concerns, primarily the lawfulness, fairness and accuracy of the personal data processing utilised by the ‘Mentions in the news’ feature,” the DPC writes.
LinkedIn appears to have been matching members to news articles by simple name matching - with obvious potential for identity mix-ups between people with shared names. “The second complaint involved the circulation of an article that the complainant believed could be detrimental to future career prospects, which the data controller had not vetted correctly.”
#Linkedin pauses new signups to review professional#
“The complainant stated that the article had been detrimental to their professional standing and had resulted in the loss of contracts for their business,” it adds. “In one of the complaints, a media article that set out details of the private life and unsuccessful career of a person of the same name as the complainant was circulated to the complainant’s connections and followers by the data controller,” the DPC writes, noting the complainant initially complained to the company itself but did not receive a satisfactory response - hence taking up the matter with the regulator. In the DPC report, the watchdog cites “two complaints about a feature on a professional networking platform” after LinkedIn incorrectly associated the members with media articles that were not actually about them.
#Linkedin pauses new signups to review how to#
The blog post also points users to a page where they can find out more about the ‘mentioned in the news’ feature, and get information on how to manage their LinkedIn email notification settings. LinkedIn adds there that it’s reviewing the accuracy of the feature, writing:Īs referenced in the Irish Data Protection Commission’s report, we received useful feedback from our members about the feature and as a result are evaluating the accuracy and functionality of Mentioned in the News for all members. We reached out to LinkedIn with questions and it pointed us to this blog post where it confirms: “We are pausing our Mentioned in the News feature for our EU members while we reevaluate its effectiveness.” Although the report does not explicitly name LinkedIn - but we’ve confirmed it is the professional social network in question. The decision to pause processing appears as a case study in the ‘Technology Multinationals Supervision’ section of an annual report published today by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC). We continue to evaluate coverage of additional regions, and encourage members to share relevant articles from their homepage. The LinkedIn help center currently displays the following European caveat regarding the feature:Īt this time, members in Designated Countries (including European Union, European Economic Area, Switzerland) may receive notifications when their connections and members they follow in other regions are mentioned (subject to member settings), but we do not send Mentioned in the News notifications that relate to members based in Designated Countries. LinkedIn told us it subsequently decided to suspend the feature in Europe. This follows a number of data protection complaints after LinkedIn’s algorithms incorrectly matched members to news articles - triggering an internal review of the feature. LinkedIn has been forced to ‘pause’ a feature in Europe in which the platform emails members’ connections when they’ve been ‘mentioned in the news’.
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