LinkedIn’s War Against Bot Scrapers Ramps Up as AI Gets Smarter

Rehmat Alam operates from the mountains of northern Pakistan, according to one of his online profiles. There, he flaunts his talent for harvesting LinkedIn data and advises YouTube viewers how to earn money off the internet.

His company, ProAPIs, allegedly boasted in marketing materials that its software can handle hundreds of requests per second to scrape profiles, selling the underlying data for thousands of dollars a month.

LinkedIn isn’t disputing the claim.

In October, the social media giant owned by Microsoft sued Rehmat and his company, accusing them of creating millions of fake accounts to scrape information about individuals and ...