Ownership?
A recent court case, Eagle v. Moran, raises new questions regarding employee LinkedIn accounts and opens the door to ownership issues across the accounts of all social media platforms. Linda Eagle, former President of Edcomm, had come across predicament when she left the company. She created an account on LinkedIn to promote her company like millions of people in this country do as well. Edcomm’s SOP has its employees use LinkedIn accounts to increase professional connections. If they left the company, it was Edcomm policy to ‘mine’ the data on the account. When Ms. Eagle employment was terminated, an Edcomm employee who knew her password changed it, thus barring her from accessing the account she created.
Ms. Eagle filed suit, claiming Edcomm had illegally accessed the account and the intrusion was a violation of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.