LinkedIn is being sued by customers claiming:

the company appropriated their identities for marketing purposes by hacking into their external e-mail accounts and downloading contacts’ addresses.

That’s a pretty serious charge. Given the process by which LinkedIn grows their user base (an expanding tree of referrals), you might be tempted to see this as true. I’m skeptical. Seems so easy to detect. A foolish move, if the charge is true. I hope this is not the case. We shall see.

Here’s LinkedIn’s public response to the suit.