500 Million Linkedin Data Compromised By Hackers!

As reported by Cyber News, 500 million users' data is accessed and put on sale on the internet. The stolen data includes Names, Email ids, Work information and Links to various social media accounts. The data is available for sale on a popular hacker's platform.

It is not untrue to say that around two-third of LinkedIn data has been scraped in this case!

As per Cyber News:
"The leaked files appear to only contain LinkedIn profile information—we did not find any deeply sensitive data like credit card details or legal documents in the sample posted by the threat actor. With that said, even an email address can be enough for a competent cybercriminal to cause real damage."

LinkedIn is a popular platform with around 740 million global users. Interestingly, India is recorded as the second highest user base in the professional social platform with 71 million users, followed by the US with 170 million user profiles. Besides, there is no exact record of Indian people who are affected by this hacking activity.

On the case, LinkedIn has confirmed that the alleged data has been sold online; however, denied the data breach case. It is said that the data available on sale is a general data which is mined using public LinkedIn profiles (no private users).

LinkedIn reported:
"We have investigated an alleged set of LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale and have determined that it is actually an aggregation of data from a number of websites and companies. It does include publicly viewable member profile data that appears to have been scraped from LinkedIn."

"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."

Furthermore, LinkedIn mentioned that they will hold the people who are behind the data scraping, and will take necessary actions whoever violates or misuse the data.

In a statement, LinkedIn assured:
"Any misuse of our members' data, such as scraping, violates LinkedIn terms of service. When anyone tries to take member data and use it for purposes LinkedIn and our members haven't agreed to, we work to stop them and hold them accountable."

This is not the first time that the digital hackers have turned their way to a social media platform. Earlier last week, a group of hackers targeted 533 million Facebook users which includes 6.1 million Indian accounts. The leaked data was found on hacking forums for free.

India is a renowned hub of social media users. As recorded, there are 530 million Whatsapp users, 410 Facebook and 210 million Instagram users.

How safe are your social media accounts?

It is highly advised to keep your data private on social media platforms. Moreover, connect with known people to prevent any data loss or misuse of your personal information (images, email, etc.).

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ISOEH (Indian School of Ethical Hacking) is a reputed cyber security institute in India. We train students in various cyber security elements to help them build a constructive career. We provide a diverse range of IT courses such as ethical hacking, ccna training, app development etc.

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