
Can A Company Keep An Employee's LinkedIn Account After Employment Ends? - llambda
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111229/03500917224/can-company-keep-employees-linkedin-account-after-theyre-no-longer-employed.shtml
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markokocic
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_
_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
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_
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
> 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_
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
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
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.

------
algoshift
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
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?)

~~~
lukejduncan
IMHO: relationships are personally unless explicitly called out in a contract.
If I met someone, I met them, you can't take that back. If a relationship is
that vital to the company then safe guards of some sort need to be in place.

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furyg3
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
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.

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pella
_"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-...](http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/content/social-networking-
and-job-change-7-tips-keeping-your-contacts)

~~~
salemh
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-...](http://takethisjobnshoveitblog.com/2010/06/01/employee-sued-
claiming-activity-on-linkedin-was-violation-of-non-compete-agreement/)

[http://dailyblogma.com/featured/employers-battle-workers-
lin...](http://dailyblogma.com/featured/employers-battle-workers-linkedin-
contacts/) _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-
aft...](http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/12/30/think-going-after-a-
twitter-account-is-bad-this-company-wants-employee-linkedin-accounts/)

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.

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DanBC
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/>)

------
ndefinite
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.

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

------
pasbesoin
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
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>

~~~
pasbesoin
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".

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

