Slashdot Mirror
Who Owns Your Online Networking Contacts?
Ben Morris writes "A recent judgement in the UK courts has forced a former employee to hand over details of his business contacts built up through LinkedIn.com while he was employed by his former company. The decision is one of the first in the UK to show the tension between businesses encouraging their employees to use social networking websites, and trying to claim that the contacts should remain confidential when they leave."
Apparently some other members of the company had been contacted by recruiters and they started going through email and found some emails in violation of the non-compete clause. They then solidified their case through the former employee's LinkedIn contacts. The guy ended up settling out of court and they drilled him financially.
After finding that out, I went through my LinkedIn contacts and removed ALL the recruiters on there I didn't know on a personal level. I then contacted the recruiters remaining on my list and asked them to contact me before sending any InMail to any of my LinkedIn contacts.
Is a tricky question.
The real question is, though, how does it impact on your and your former employer's life? A contact isn't some sort of IP. There's a person or a company on the other end of the address, phone number or mail address. How will they react to a company that browbeats you into handing over your, partly private, address book?
If anything I'd send a mail to my contacts and tell them in no uncertain terms what my former employer did. Would you want to do business with a company where you have to watch constantly for backstabbing? I don't know if I'd really enjoy that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
some people might say that a "list" is not the "property" of anyone.
These people never spent years and money building and updating their customer lists.