LinkedIn Accused of Hacking Users Address Books to Spam Their Contacts

Is anyone else sick and tired of getting spammed with email requests to join LinkedIn from family, friends and co-workers?  It appears that LinkedIn users are now sick and tired of having their contact lists surreptitiously mined and exploited by the service.  From Bloomberg:

LinkedIn, owner of the world’s most popular professional-networking website, was sued by customers who claim the company appropriated their identities for marketing purposes by hacking into their external e-mail accounts and downloading contacts’ addresses.

The customers, who aim to lead a group suit against LinkedIn, asked a federal judge in San Jose, California, to bar the company from repeating the alleged violations and to force it to return any revenue stemming from its use of their identities to promote the site to non-members, according to a court filing . . .