The career-focused social media platform LinkedIn is being sued in San Francisco Federal Court over allegations that the site’s iPhone app snooped on users by reading the contents of their smartphones’ clipboards.
Reuters reports that the online careers platform LinkedIn has been sued in San Francisco Federal Court over allegations that the site’s iOS app spied on users actions by snooping on the contents of users’ clipboards. Apple’s Universal Clipboard allows users to copy text, images, photos, and videos on one Apple device and paste that content on another Apple device.
A lawsuit filed by Adam Bauer alleges that LinkedIn’s app accessed the Universal Clipboard information without notifying users. LinkedIn did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Breitbart News recently reported that another social media app, Reddit, has promised to release a fix for its iOS app after it was discovered that the app was copying the contents of users’ clipboards. Users that were running the new iOS 14 beta firmware discovered this after receiving a system alert stating that the Reddit app was copying clipboard information. TikTok was also caught spying on users using the same technique.
A Reddit spokesperson said in a statement: “We tracked this down to a codepath in the post composer that checks for URLs in the pasteboard and then suggests a post title based on the text contents of the URL. We do not store or send the pasteboard contents. We removed this code and are releasing the fix on July 14th.” Reddit user Donald Morton posted a video to Twitter which showed the clipboard alerts:
UPDATE: Seems like Reddit is capturing the clipboard on each keystroke as well 😕
Seeing the notification come up just as much. pic.twitter.com/nzbElmRG2a
— Don urspace.io (@DonCubed) July 2, 2020
53 apps including LinkedIn, Reddit, and TikTok have been accused of capturing users’ Universal Clipboard content after Apple’s latest privacy feature was launched which notifies users when the clipboard was accessed by an app. Bauer’s lawsuit alleges: “These “reads” are interpreted by Apple’s Universal Clipboard as a “paste” command.”
Last week, a LinkedIn executive stated that a new version of the company’s iOS app had been released to fix the issue. The lawsuit against LinkedIn seeks to certify the complaint as a class-action lawsuit based on the alleged violation of California laws. The complaint alleges that not only has LinkedIn been spying on its users but it has been spying on nearby computers and other devices and circumventing Apple’s Universal Clipboard timeout.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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