A rather worrying case in the United States has been reported in the news this week after a woman had her LinkedIn account stolen by a former co-worker, only to find that there is nothing that can be done under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Linda Eagle had willingly handed over her username and password to a colleague in order for her to help manage the social profile and keep track of their business relationships. However, when Eagle was fired from her job at Edcomm, the co-worker changed the password to the LinkedIn profile and locked Eagle out of her own account. As if that wasn’t enough, the account was then edited to reflect the profile picture and name of the person who replaced Eagle.
Understandably, she took Edcomm to court citing that her reputation had been harmed and that she missed out on a number of business opportunities as a result of being separated from her LinkedIn data. But due to the fact that there are no direct, monetary damages such as having to replace a computer or a computer component, the court has ruled that her claim won’t hold up under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
This is all very unfortunate for Ms Eagle. Building the profiles and extended networks that we all enjoy online through services such as LinkedIn and Facebook can take an awful long time. Being separated from this content (for whatever reason) can have a big impact on your business as well as your social life.
SocialSafe allows you to back up your LinkedIn contacts, updates, Facebook Friends, Photos, Twitter account and much, much more. If you lose access to your actual account for a social network, you will still be able to browse and search through all the content you have backed up to your own computer. And if you ever have to rebuild an account from scratch, at least you’ll be able to see which pieces need to go where.