How to Find Out If You Might Be Eligible For Money From LinkedIn

Image Source: Getty / Justin Sullivan

If you're like me, you use your old, barely checked email address for things like Amazon and LinkedIn so that you don't get bombarded with emails every day. Glossing over subject lines with "please add me to your LinkedIn" is so easy to do that you might have missed a potentially superimportant email from the networking company recently — one that could score you some cash.

Here's the deal: LinkedIn sent thousands of emails to users because it's in the middle of a class-action lawsuit for . . . wait for it . . . sending its users too many emails.

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This is all the result of a feature on LinkedIn called Add Connections, which lets LinkedIn access your contacts and send them an email, asking them to accept or deny your request. That's all cool and expected, but then LinkedIn would send another email. And then another. So, three emails instead of one.

Lots of people were annoyed, and so now there's a lawsuit. You most likely used this feature, but the fine print of the lawsuit states only users who signed up for the website between Sept. 17, 2011, and Oct. 31, 2014, are eligible for the money. Specifically, "LinkedIn has agreed to pay $13 million into a fund that can be used, in part, to make payments to members of the Settlement Class who file approved claims." This could mean payments of $10 or less, or possibly up to $1,500. If you didn't get the email but want to find out if you're eligible to file a claim, or you just want to know what that even means and how to do it, go to the official lawsuit website, complete with an FAQ section. Or maybe send LinkedIn an email.