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Data breaches have become a common thing among various social media platforms but LinkedIn seems to have suffered one of the biggest. According to a report released by Restore Privacy, the business-oriented platform suffered a huge breach, exposing data belonging to over 700 million of its users. This number accounts for roughly 92% of its user base.
The data was reportedly acquired by a hacker who managed to gain access to the official LinkedIn API (Application Programming Interface). This was then made public when the attacker started selling the information online and posted a sample of the data of 1 million users on June 22. The leaked data files include the following user information:
- Email Addresses
- Full names
- Phone numbers
- Physical addresses
- Geolocation records
- LinkedIn username and profile URL
- Personal and professional experience/background
- Genders
- Other social media accounts and usernames
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Image courtesy Restore Privacy
Although the samples were found to have no login credentials or login credentials, there is still a whole lot of information that other hackers could use to exploit for financial gain. As it stands, 700+ million people are at risk of identity theft, phishing attempts, social engineering attacks and account hacking.
The information found on the samples can still be used by cybercriminals to create full detailed profiles of their potential victims. It can also be used to generally gain access to other accounts. And once one’s private data is leaked, there surely is no getting back.
This will definitely have LinkedIn in a lot of trouble considering the fact that this is the second time the platform has suffered an attack this year alone. In April, the site was victim to a similar data leak that exposed 500 million accounts. So it is not yet clear if the same attackers seemed to have found a way back.
LinkedIn has not yet responded to inform its users although it’s only a matter of time before the report is confirmed as either true or false.
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