LinkedIn Faces GDPR Complaint Over Paid Profile‑Visitor Data

LinkedIn tracks visits to profile pages and offers a list of all visitors over the past 365 days behind a paid Premium subscription. The service is marketed as a way to see who has viewed your profile, and LinkedIn uses the same visitor data to personalize content and ads. Users can opt out of the tracking, but LinkedIn does not require an opt‑in consent before collecting the activity data. Under Article 15 of the GDPR, personal data that a user can see for a fee must also be provided free of charge in response to an access request. LinkedIn refuses to comply, citing a “data protection interest” that it claims only applies when a request is made. The Norwegian privacy group noyb has lodged a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority on behalf of a user and is demanding a full response and a possible fine. The complaint argues that charging for data that is already visible to the user is illegal and that LinkedIn’s argument no longer holds when the company has obtained consent and sells the same data for money. If LinkedIn does not change its policy, regulators could impose a significant penalty for violating GDPR.