Indeed sued and LinkedIn fined

[00:00:01] Dieser komplexe Finanzierungstalk ist ganz schön anstrengend. Ob ich mein Depot jemals angelegt kriege?

[00:00:06] Aber du hast doch schon ein Depot.

[00:00:08] Äh, nee.

[00:00:09] Doch, du hast das Vodafone Gigadepot.

[00:00:11] Ha, stimmt. Und da habe ich ja selbst in der Hand, wie groß mein Depot ist.

[00:00:15] Jetzt mit dem Vodafone Gigadepot und verbrauchtes Datenvolumen in den nächsten Monat mitnehmen.

[00:00:19] Go on im zuverlässigen 5G-Netz von Vodafone. Vodafone. Together we can.

[00:00:24] Welcome to episode 85 of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast.

[00:00:45] I am one of your two co-hosts, Stephen Rothberg with College Recruiter.

[00:00:49] Joined with me here today is my regular co-host, Peter Zulman.

[00:00:54] It's been a while since I've seen you, my man.

[00:00:56] You've never called me regular before either, but that's okay.

[00:01:00] My highly irregular co-host, Peter Zulman.

[00:01:03] That sounds fair to me. And a good afternoon to you.

[00:01:07] You're moving house next week.

[00:01:09] We are.

[00:01:10] And I hope it all goes smoothly.

[00:01:12] Thank you.

[00:01:13] I'm sitting in the basement of my son's house in New Jersey, where I came to visit the grandkid

[00:01:19] for a few days. And it's good to connect. So I will start off with, we love it when the

[00:01:27] big boys are getting in trouble, right? Or at least, I don't know, in trouble is the right

[00:01:32] word, but there's certainly always some stuff flinging around at them.

[00:01:37] It's a little bit like when you're driving down a freeway and you see an accident and you

[00:01:42] know that you shouldn't be so interested, but you are.

[00:01:46] Yeah, something like that. So anyway, Indeed is being sued for patent violations.

[00:01:53] A company called FlexiWorld Technologies sued saying that four features of Indeed's web-based platform

[00:02:04] and mobile apps infringe four FlexiWorld Technologies patents related to methods and systems for mining

[00:02:13] users' data to provide services over the internet.

[00:02:18] Well, to call me a patent expert would be patently ridiculous.

[00:02:24] You're not the only one who makes stupid puns there.

[00:02:28] Right, right. It's a competition.

[00:02:29] Yeah, the stupid pun competition. But good luck to FlexiWorld. It appears that they are not an

[00:02:36] operating company, which means that they're suing Canon over wireless printers. They're suing

[00:02:43] Amazon and Roku last year. It owns the patents, but it doesn't do anything with them. My guess is one

[00:02:51] of two things. Either Indeed will squash them pretty quickly or they'll settle pretty quickly to get rid

[00:02:57] of the nuisance value. Yeah. I'm not an expert on this stuff at all, but patent lawsuits are

[00:03:04] a dime a dozen or maybe even worse than that. Just because you have a patent does not actually mean

[00:03:12] that you own the intellectual property for it because it's sort of like a presumption that you

[00:03:17] own it. It's not absolute proof. And methods for data mining, okay. As I said, I'm not an expert.

[00:03:25] You're not an expert. I don't think Indeed and its parent company, Recruit, are quaking in their boots.

[00:03:32] Let's get to the one that's for... LinkedIn has been fined $335 million or 310 million euros,

[00:03:43] if you're crossed upon, for violating GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation,

[00:03:51] in the European Union. Their big operation in Ireland and Dublin. LinkedIn has pretty much all of

[00:04:00] its European operations there. Company has 30 days to appeal the decision. I'm guessing for $335

[00:04:10] million, they're going to appeal. And let's talk more generally. Privacy is a huge issue for job boards

[00:04:19] slash recruitment marketplaces. You probably spend a lot of time on it at College Recruiter. Why don't

[00:04:26] you talk about that for a minute? And what it entails? So one of the things that a lot of our

[00:04:34] viewers and listeners might not really appreciate is that GDPR, although it is probably the best known

[00:04:41] privacy law. It is not anywhere close to being the only privacy law. There are over 190 different

[00:04:49] privacy laws around the world. Some are regional, like GDPR for the EU. Some are country-specific.

[00:04:59] Some are for particular regions within a country, like California's privacy law. Some of the privacy

[00:05:06] laws are impossible to comply with if you are also complying with one of the others. And so the larger

[00:05:15] the job board in terms of the geography, the more countries and markets that you operate in, the more

[00:05:21] likely it is that you're going to have to comply with multiple privacy laws. It's entirely possible.

[00:05:28] I don't know much about the LinkedIn lawsuit. It's entirely possible that LinkedIn was fully compliant

[00:05:34] in every respect and that the EU regulators are just coming down on them in a wrong way. But it's also,

[00:05:42] I think, far more likely that with all of the intricacies of the privacy laws, the poorly

[00:05:48] worded legislation that a lot of them have, that LinkedIn actually was not in compliance. They may have

[00:05:55] thought they were. They may have made every effort to be. And the regulators are just looking at the

[00:06:00] legislation differently than LinkedIn does. But that's why you have courts.

[00:06:04] Well, this is interesting because LinkedIn said it's a final decision on claims from 2018 about some of

[00:06:14] our digital advertising efforts in the EU. While we believe we've been in compliance with the GDPR,

[00:06:22] we are working to ensure our ad practices meet the decision by the IDPC, which is the

[00:06:29] Irish Data Protection Commission or something like that deadline. Asked whether the company intended to appeal,

[00:06:37] she added, our focus right now is on ensuring our ad practices meet this decision by the IDPC deadline. So they didn't

[00:06:47] even say they were going to appeal. It's kind of unusual when you get fined $335 million. But there also may be

[00:06:57] some negotiation going on. And so they don't appeal, but they settled for $150 million or $120 million. Look,

[00:07:04] you know, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Microsoft last year said it had set aside $425 million. Microsoft is LinkedIn's

[00:07:14] parent company to cover the cost of penalties arising from the case. So the $425 million was set aside.

[00:07:24] They got fined $335 million. I want to take a break real quick just to let you know about a new show

[00:07:32] we've just added to the network. Up Next at Work, hosted by Gene and Kate Akil of the Devin Group.

[00:07:41] Fantastic show. If you're looking for something that pushes the norm, pushes the boundaries, has some

[00:07:46] really spirited conversations, Google Up Next at Work, Gene and Kate Akil from the Devin Group.

[00:07:59] You know what you should know? You should know the You Should Know podcast. That's what you should know.

[00:08:05] Because then you'd be in the know on all things that are timely and topical. Subscribe to the You Should Know

[00:08:11] podcast. Thanks.

[00:08:14] Kind of reading between the lines there, that to me sounds like somebody at Microsoft said,

[00:08:19] oops, you know, we made a mistake. We're going to have to pony up some money. You know, a year ago,

[00:08:24] two years ago, they didn't know how much it was going to be. They made a pretty conservative estimate.

[00:08:30] And the actual fine came in less than the amount of money that they set aside. And now they're talking

[00:08:36] about making sure that they're in compliance. That sure sounds to me like they got their hands

[00:08:41] caught in the cookie jar. And again, not necessarily knowingly. They may have absolutely

[00:08:47] have thought that they were fully in compliance and that the regulators are reading the law one way

[00:08:52] and the folks at LinkedIn and Microsoft were reading it a different way. You know, one of the things I

[00:08:58] was hoping to talk with you about, and you kind of alluded to this, Peter, was when you're talking

[00:09:02] about job boards and recruitment marketplaces, that privacy is a big deal to us. No doubt. The

[00:09:07] AIM group also covers other classified verticals, right? Cars and autos, real estate, et cetera.

[00:09:14] Are these privacy laws as big of a deal?

[00:09:17] Oh, absolutely.

[00:09:18] Okay.

[00:09:19] They're a very big deal. Look, it's all about your audience, whether it's recruitment,

[00:09:26] whether it's real estate, whether it's automotive, has to be confident that their information is not

[00:09:37] going to be hacked, is not going to be taken. I think it's more critical in recruitment because

[00:09:46] you've got so much personally identifiable information. And in many databases, people are

[00:09:52] required to put in their government ID number. U.S.-based job boards won't take a social security

[00:10:02] number, the legitimate ones. Chris Russell had a really good column about a week ago about how to

[00:10:12] tell when scammers are trying to use your job board. Chris Russell, rectechmedia.com. But it's a

[00:10:20] constant, you know, they get in, they say, oh, you got the job. We'll send you a check. And then you,

[00:10:26] you know, use it for this and that. And then they, they want your social security number. They want

[00:10:32] your tax ID number, things like that. It's a constant battle for job boards and recruitment

[00:10:40] marketplaces to make sure that the scammers aren't getting away to find people who are going to

[00:10:50] who are sometimes desperate to get a job. And it's, that's not a question of the privacy laws. That's

[00:10:58] a question of scammers using your sites. And that is often, often true as well with real estate sites,

[00:11:05] with automotive sites and with the general merchandise or the stuff sites, the sites like

[00:11:11] Craigslist and Kijiji in Canada and Le Boncoin in France, where people are, you know, person to person

[00:11:17] transactions and the risk is high. So privacy is, is a big issue for job boards. It's also a big issue

[00:11:29] for automotive real estate and recruitment. We said we'd run 10 minutes. We're now at 12 and a half.

[00:11:36] Yeah. So you wanted to tell the viewers and for those listening to the audio only version of the

[00:11:42] podcast about a bit of a bonus that if they want to look at, I think it was the LinkedIn.

[00:11:49] We'll open up the LinkedIn, take it out from behind the paywall. Yeah.

[00:11:54] aimgroup.com. And if you just search for LinkedIn and privacy or some variation thereof,

[00:12:01] it is included in our recruitment intelligence report. I know Steven is a longtime subscriber.

[00:12:08] I think, I think subscriber number two, wasn't I? No, you were number one and you still are number

[00:12:14] one, Steven. Wow. You were our first subscriber and it's been probably four years now and you

[00:12:20] haven't spent nearly enough money for it, but we're glad you do. I keep sending, you know,

[00:12:26] Jonathan, you know, the CEO of aim group. I keep sending him massive checks and he keeps telling me

[00:12:31] that he's not going to tell Peter anything about it, but maybe that's a topic for another podcast.

[00:12:35] And they're made out to Jonathan Turpin, I presume. They are personally. And he just,

[00:12:40] he just, you know, deposits them into his personal account and says that Peter can,

[00:12:46] you know, go and something about jumping into a lake. Sounds fair to me.

[00:12:50] Well, good to see you. It has been good to do this. Good luck with your move next week.

[00:12:55] Thank you. I will be home. I hope the hurricane debris has been cleaned up by the time I get back.

[00:13:02] It was very minor compared to what happened to a lot of people. So I consider myself

[00:13:08] remarkably lucky. Have a good week, sir. Cheers, Peter. Take care. Happy Halloween. Thanks. Bye.