Judge orders LinkedIn to stop blocking data-scraping firm

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered LinkedIn to stop blocking a startup company from scraping LinkedIn personal profiles for data.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen has sided with San Francisco-based hiQ Labs, Inc., a company that analyzes workforce data scraped from public profiles.

LinkedIn had told hiQ to stop and installed technical blocks to prevent hiQ from accessing otherwise publicly available information on LinkedIn users. Chen gave LinkedIn a day to remove those blocks. Monday's preliminary injunction is in effect while the case goes to trial.

LinkedIn, which is a part of Microsoft, says it may challenge the ruling.

LinkedIn spokeswoman Nicole Leverich says "we will continue to fight to protect our members' ability to control the information they make available on LinkedIn."