According to a LinkedIn report, the personal information of 500 million LinkedIn profiles were put up for sale on a hacker forum.
It seems that we’re in for another data breach, this time involving LinkedIn, just days after a major Facebook data breach made headlines. According to a LinkedIn report, the personal information of 500 million LinkedIn profiles were put up for sale on a hacker forum.
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500 million LinkedIn profiles were put up for sale on a hacker forum.
The hacker has set a price of about $2 to access the 2 million profile samples that were leaked
the hacker has demanded a four-digit amount in Bitcoin for the 500 million accounts.
Also read : Facebook claims it won’t notify the 533 million users who’ve been affected by the data breach
Did LinkedIn have a data breach?
500 million LinkedIn profile archives was scraped and put up for sale on the web. Another 2 million records were leaked as a proof-of-concept sample, according to the report, which also mentions the 500 million profile bank.
LinkedIn’s members’ full names, email addresses, phone numbers, and genders were among the information leaked. The hacker has set a price of about $2 to access the 2 million profile samples that were leaked. For the 500 million accounts, the hacker has demanded a four-digit amount, most likely in Bitcoin.
Was LinkedIn hacked?
LinkedIn stated that the leaked data was public information, in response to hack. LinkedIn explained, they investigated an alleged for sale collection of LinkedIn data and discovered that it is an aggregate of data from a variety of websites and companies.
It does, however, seem to have been scraped from LinkedIn and includes publicly viewable member profile data. LinkedIn said that in a statement, “This was not a LinkedIn data breach, and no private member account data from LinkedIn was included in what we’ve been able to review”.
The company added that data scraping violates its terms of services, and it will work on holding the person responsible for this. Facebook’s data leak was also data scraping and not a hack, the company had said in a blog.
What to do if LinkedIn is breached?
LinkedIn has a user base of over 700 million people. In a situation where over 500 million records have been compromised, every user must exercise caution.
- Changing the passwords of LinkedIn accounts and email accounts linked to LinkedIn profiles.
- Using a password manager that can auto-fill logins and creating a solid, random, unique password.
- Activating two-factor authentication (2FA) on LinkedIn accounts and other accounts that enable 2FA
- Be cautious of strangers who send you LinkedIn messages or request connections.
- Recognizing phishing emails and text messages.
- Never open a link to a website from an email, instead manually navigating to the site and logging in.
Additionally, use a third-party website, Haveibeenpwned.com – makes it simple to check by entering your email address.
The website alerts you if any data breach occurs, linked with your email and phone number.
You might also like: Facebook responds to the data breach, claiming that the information was scraped and not hacked