noyb sues LinkedIn over paywalled data

LinkedIn’s “Who viewed your profile” feature looks like a sales tool. That is exactly why this fight matters. noyb, the Austrian privacy group, has filed a GDPR complaint arguing that LinkedIn cannot charge people to see personal data the law says they can access for free. (ppc.land) ### What happened? On May 5, noyb said it filed a complaint with Austria’s data protection authority against LinkedIn Ireland. The claim is simple: LinkedIn shows profile-visitor identities to Premium subscribers, but when a non-paying user makes an Article 15 access request for the same information, LinkedIn refuses. noyb says that turns a legal access right into a paid product. (ppc.land) ### What data is this about? It is the record of who viewed your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn already processes that information and uses it inside the product. The complaint points to a user who could see that 55 people had visited their profile in a 90-day period, but not the names behind those visits unless they upgraded. Premium was listed at roughly €29.74 per month. (ppc.land) ### Why does GDPR make this tricky? Article 15 is the GDPR right of access. Basically, if a company is processing your personal data, you can ask whether it has that data and get a copy, along with details about how it is used. The core dispute is whether profile-visitor information counts(ppc.land)s it already meets Article 15 in other ways. (dataprotection.ie) ### What is noyb’s real argument? noyb’s point is not just “Premium is annoying.” It is that LinkedIn seems happy to treat this information as valuable enough to sell, while denying that same information when users invoke a legal right. That is the contradiction noyb wants regulators t(dataprotection.ie)s a violation. (ppc.land) ### What does LinkedIn say back? LinkedIn is not accepting the premise. In its response, the company said it is false that only Premium members can see who viewed their profile, and it said it satisfies Article 15 through disclosures in its privacy policy. That matters because the case may(ppc.land)icher Premium view. (euractiv.com) ### Why should marketers care? Because this feature is not just vanity. Recruiters, sales teams, and job seekers use profile-view signals as intent data. If regulators say those signals are a GDPR access right, LinkedIn may need to redraw the line between paid prospecting features and baselin(euractiv.com)ackage some derived visibility as a subscription product. That last point is an inference from the complaint’s theory and LinkedIn’s current product design. (ppc.land) ### Why is this bigger than LinkedIn? Because it gets at a broader platform habit — turning information about you into something you can only unlock by paying the same company that collected it. LinkedIn was already hit with a €310 million GDPR penalty in October 2024 over ad-data processi(ppc.land)handles personal data. (euractiv.com) ### Bottom line? This case is really about whether a platform can sell enhanced access to data while still claiming it has honored a free legal access right. If regulators side with noyb, the decision could reach well past LinkedIn’s profile-view page. (ppc.land)