WASHINGTON, D.C. Nov. 12 (DPI) — The online professional network LinkedIn is selling  work-related reviews about its members to prospective employers, according to a lawsuit brought by four users who claim such reviews hurt their job prospects.

According to a report in The New York Times this weekend, LinkedIn now faces a small class-action suit for allegedly allowing employers who pay for premium membership to retrieve reviews of workers before they hire them.  As one consumer advocate told The Times:

“People join LinkedIn to improve their chances of getting a job and it looks as if the LinkedIn product was being used to pre-screen people to prevent them from getting jobs.”

Also notable, the plaintiffs are citing a 1970 law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act in their claim against LinkedIn. The law was created to prohibit the distribution of inaccurate credit reports. A Northern California court will decide whether the claim has merit under that law, created long before the advent of the internet and its anonymous angry rants.

www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/technology/on-linkedin-a-reference-list-you-didnt-write.html

It’s not clear whether the “reference search” feature – which allows paying LinkedIn members to search for someone’s peers who worked at a company at the same time he or she did – includes identified on-the-record or anonymous off-the-record references.  Most seemed to be identified references, however; references from identified individuals would obviously lower the likelihood of people trashing one another about their job performance online, and reduce the viability of the plaintiffs’ claim.

And a LinkedIn spokesman told The Times that a job-related reference search “does not reveal any of that member’s nonpublic information” – a hardly reassuring statement for anyone who has drawn swords with a work colleague in their career.

The Times pointed out that Spokeo faced a similar backlash two years ago:

In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Spokeo, an online data broker. The agency contended that the company had marketed reports to recruiters and background screeners without providing consumers with protections afforded by the law. The company agreed to pay $800,000 to settle the accusations. Spokeo.com now says: “Utilizing Spokeo’s platform for purposes of employee screening is strictly prohibited.”

http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/135/~/reference-search