Disclaimer: Not legal advice. Consult counsel for specific jurisdiction and use case.

United States

The hiQ Labs v LinkedIn case (Ninth Circuit, 2022) established that scraping publicly accessible LinkedIn data does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Public data scraping is generally lawful in the US.

Caveats: violating LinkedIn's Terms of Service is a separate matter (contract, not criminal). State-level privacy laws (CCPA, etc.) add layers.

European Union

Public LinkedIn data extraction is lawful under GDPR Article 6(1)(f) (legitimate interest basis), provided you can defend the proportionality and respect data subject rights. See our GDPR guide.

United Kingdom

UK ICO guidance largely mirrors EU GDPR. Same conditions apply: public data, legitimate interest documented, opt-out honored.

What's NOT legal anywhere

  • Bypassing LinkedIn auth walls or paywalls
  • Using credentials you don't own
  • Reselling personal data without consent
  • Ignoring lawful opt-out requests

Lawful extraction tooling.

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