Data Scraping Risks for LinkedIn and Apollo Users

💰 A fine of EUR 240,000 was imposed on a company (KASPR) for data scraping. It was a cross-border case, involving all supervisory authorities (the lead SA was #CNIL in #France). 💻 What does KASPR do? "KASPR markets a pay-for extension for the Chrome browser that enables customers to obtain the professional contact details of people they visit the profiles on the LinkedIn social network. The company builds a database of contact details from Linkedin and other websites such as domain name registries. The contact details thus collected generally enable the company's customers to contact the target persons, for example for commercial prospecting, recruitment or identity verification. KASPR's database contains about 160 million contacts." ❓ What were the findigs of CNIL? The CNIL found the following breaches of the #GDPR: 👉 Processing without a proper legal basis (Art. 6 GDPR), 👉 No proportionate data retention period was defined and applied (Art. 5 (1) e) GDPR), 👉 No transparency and information towards individuals (Art. 12 and 14 GDPR), 👉 Failure to ensure the exercies of the right of access (Art. 15 GDPR). ❓ What measures did the CNIL take? The CNIL imposed a fine of EUR 240,000 on the company and ordered the company to: 👉 cease collecting the data of persons who chose to limit the visibility of their contact details, and delete the data collected in this way; (If it is not possible, the persons concerned must be informed and the possibility of objecting must be provided to them.) 👉 stop the automatic renewal of the storage of personal data of target persons; 👉 inform the people whose data is collected in a language they understand; 👉 respond to requests for access. More information is available at https://lnkd.in/dW-sq2RU #dataprotection #privacy #datascraping #compliance #gdprenforcement #crossborder #eu

LinkedIn banned Apollo and Seamless for data scraping. If you run B2B sales or are building a GTM product, here's what you need to know about the data landscape: 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮: Scraping public content is legal in the US, but using accounts for private content can get you banned. Creating fake accounts to bypass bans is illegal. Personal scraping via tools like Phantombuster or Botdog is typically fine - LinkedIn targets bulk scrapers selling data. 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀: providers like ZoomInfo, Apollo and others buy data from others. Sometimes the other party is scraping data, other times they are an app that has user data from signups, and they sell that! 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿-𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮: These platforms also leverage data you connect to them - email headers from connected accounts, CRM entries you create, etc. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗯: a ton of web data is not locked up on social media or apps. It's spread across news, company websites, and more. Everyone buys LinkedIn data, but the long tail of web data can be your data advantage. At Fixpoint, we think the long tail of the web is super valuable, so we're turning it into a database of up-to-date people + company data.

LinkedIn just sent a clear message: they're done playing games with automation tools. In early 2025, LinkedIn blocked Apollo and Seamless.AI by removing their company pages. These tools violate LinkedIn's Terms of Service, and the platform is cracking down harder than ever. In this week's Enabled, I break down the new LinkedIn reality:  • How LinkedIn catches automation (behavioral patterns, technical detection, user feedback)  • The current limits that actually matter (100-200 weekly connection requests)  • Why quality beats volume for account health  • The signal-based alternative that reduces restriction risk Plus: How to recover if you get restricted and stay compliant while scaling. Your LinkedIn account is your most valuable sales asset. Don't lose it by gaming the system.