LinkedIn has, for many years, been one of the largest sources of data used by data brokers and nefarious actors around the world. Its posts and direct messages have been parsed and used as training data for artificial intelligence systems. All of this has been done without informed consent from its users and the platform makes it entirely impossible for its users to opt-out most forms of data collection.

I have covered privacy issues repeatedly for this paper, from Flock Safety cameras, state privacy laws to online age verification and its dangers. As an individual and a reporter, I am deeply aware of the dangers posed by data brokers and how little recourse American consumers have. One of the few ways to prevent your data from being vacuumed up in the first place is to resist the siren call of platforms like LinkedIn and other open social media sites.

Data brokers and people search sites have been linked to serious and violent crime across the country, and little has been done to rein in their reach over Americans’ private lives. Data brokers do not just hold names, addresses and phone numbers like the phone book once did. They have been shown to collect and sell data on people’s real-time location, political views, content habits, physical and mental health data and numerous other categories of sensitive personal information that most people would likely choose to keep private. These modern data brokers also do not have blanket opt-outs like phone books used to.

There are almost no rules in the United States governing the data collected and sold by these data brokers and people search websites, not even rules governing the data’s accuracy. Many search sites claim to have background checks, though many of these services have been fined by the Federal Trade Commission over false and misleading information in these so-called background checks. These background checks are often used by prospective employers, landlords and everyday people trying to snoop on individuals’ private lives.

LinkedIn, in particular, has been one of the most careless with respect to user privacy. They require users to verify a phone number, email address, upload a headshot and in many cases upload an ID to their platform to verify their identity. Without verification, the user will be locked out of their account permanently, without the ability to change privacy and visibility settings or the fundamental ability to delete the account.

This has happened to me in the past with LinkedIn, and my singular recourse was to send the company a legal demand to delete the account under the Massachusetts unfair, deceptive act or practice law. This law protects consumers from “unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce.”

Why this situation necessitated a rise to the level of a legal demand for such a simple remedy is beyond comprehension, but this is not an isolated case of inaction on LinkedIn’s part.

In 2024, LinkedIn was fined $335 million for violating the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation. In January of 2025, the company was accused in a lawsuit of sharing direct messages with third parties for AI training. In that lawsuit, LinkedIn was accused of changing its privacy policy and frequently asked questions pages to obfuscate with whom and for what purpose data was being collected and shared.

The list of violations and inaction on the part of LinkedIn continues, but one last example I find most damning was that in the latest class action lawsuit filed against the company. Their defense in the lawsuit was that “no one would have been able to sift through the amount of data shared and so privacy wasn’t violated,” Carly Nairn wrote for Court House News Service.

LinkedIn’s weak protections make it trivial to parse all the data on an account and download the pictures a user uploads, including profile photos and use them for any purpose one can imagine.

Assuming a consumer was properly informed of the risks and violations they would be subjected to when signing up for one of these platforms, I fail to see why they would voluntarily choose to do so. Using the argument that as a company we share so much data that no one could reasonably sift through it is, to put it simply, utter nonsense.

It is my view that a service should not be collecting such a vast amount of information that no one person could read through it, let alone so much data that they could view it as a legal defense.

Data has shown that this assumption of Americans wanting more private options is true. A Pew Research poll showed that 72% of Americans support privacy regulations.

It is to that end that I am making my appeal to you today. We must stop forcing students and professionals of all ages to subject themselves to the whims and dangers these platforms impose.

In CAS-201, students are required to create a LinkedIn profile or to update an existing one. This is not the first class where I have been told to create a social media profile, though, through careful action today, I do hope it can be the last.

Educators, employers and parents must weigh the risks with the rewards and in my view, they should choose the side of individual safety and privacy over that of ease and latent momentum.