Data Breach: 500 million LinkedIn users' personal data leaked online

As per reports, over 500 million LinkedIn users' data were compromised in a huge data leak. As per CyberNews, Linkedin has been a part of a massive data breach that has exposed crucial data of 500 million users on the dark web. The report states that information that has been leaked includes the LinkedIn ID, Full names, email addresses, phone numbers, genders, Links to LinkedIn profiles, Links to other social media profiles, professional titles, and other work-related data. The report further added that it is not clear whether the threat actor is selling the updated Linkedin profiles or whether the data has been aggregated from the previous breach suffered by Linkedin.

Linkedin said that the breach includes publicly viewable profile data that has been scraped from Linkedin. The site said in a statement, “Members trust LinkedIn with their data, and we take action to protect that trust. 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. 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.”

CyberNews stated that the cybercriminals can use the leaked data to carry out targeted phishing attacks, spam 500 million emails and phone numbers and brute-force the passwords of Linkedin profiles and email addresses. To safeguard yourself from possible threats, change the password of your Linkedin account and the email address associated with the LinkedIn account and enable two-factor authentication on all your official accounts.