LinkedIn was recently caught reading users’ clipboards on iPhone and iPad thanks to the new privacy features of iOS 14, as we reported last week. Even though the company claimed it was due to a software bug, there’s now an iPhone user who’s suing LinkedIn for supposedly reading sensitive content from the clipboard without permission.
According to a Yahoo! Finance report, Adam Bauer filed a lawsuit in the San Francisco federal court arguing that LinkedIn collects personal information from iPhone and iPad users via the system’s clipboard.
Bauer complains that LinkedIn may not only have access to private data from the device on which the app is installed but also from other nearby devices such as a Mac through Apple’s Universal Clipboard feature.
The class-action lawsuit classifies the problem as an alleged violation of the law or social norms under California laws. LinkedIn hasn’t commented on the situation yet, but the company said a few days ago that the iOS app wasn’t intentionally reading the users’ clipboard.
iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 includes a new banner alert that lets users know if an app is pasting from the clipboard, which is part of a series of new privacy features Apple is adding to its operating systems this year.
This particular clipboard feature is already exposing the behavior of some popular apps like TikTok, AccuWeather, AliExpress, and now LinkedIn. Even after several reports on the web, this is the first time a user has filed a lawsuit based on the new iOS 14 privacy feature — and the update has been available to a restricted number of users for just two weeks.
We’re yet to know if the court will accept the user’s appeal against LinkedIn.
