LinkedIn's New Massive Data Breach Affects 700 Million Users

A massive LinkedIn data breach has been reported, and nearly everyone has been affected. A new report suggests that the professional networking site has been affected by another violation. More than 700 million users appear to have been affected this time, representing more than 92 percent of the platform's users. Surprisingly, anyone heard about this LinkedIn data breach when the hacker himself announced it. LinkedIn users must be very concerned, as email addresses, full names, phone numbers, physical addresses are being offered for sale, and perhaps passwords.

LinkedIn Data: Hacker Announces Sale

As per the report, the breach was announced on June 22 in a forum by the alleged hacker, who has put the data of 700 million users up for sale. RestorePrivacy was also able to verify a sample of the data containing information of one million LinkedIn users that the hacker published. Reportedly includes email addresses, full names, phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation records, LinkedIn username and profile URL, personal and professional background or experience, genders, and other user's social media accounts and names.

Are LinkedIn account passwords for sale?

While the data breach reportedly contains no password, the fact that all of this publicly available information was ready to be removed from the web is not a good sign for concerned LinkedIn account holders. Nefarious individuals or groups could also misuse the data to gain access to the accounts of individuals posing as them. It could also be used for identity theft, as a large amount of data reveals a lot about individual users.

LinkedIn data breach: Verify your account security?

There is no way for individual users to verify whether they have been affected by the LinkedIn data breach when publishing this article. However, they can visit the security researcher Troy Hunt Have I Been Pwned or Firefox Monitor and enter the email address they registered with LinkedIn to receive alerts once the breach data is available to search on these services.

How LinkedIn Reacted

LinkedIn stated the issue, claiming that this was not a data breach and exposed no private LinkedIn member data. "Our initial investigation has found that this data was scraped from LinkedIn and other various websites and includes the same data reported earlier this year in our April 2021 scraping update," said the statement.

LinkedIn threatens action

LinkedIn also appears prepared to take action against the individual for leaking the data. "Members trust LinkedIn with their data, and 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," said the company in the statement.

Surprisingly, many large Internet companies have suffered data breaches in recent months, and Microsoft LinkedIn is no exception. Earlier this year, news emerged that data gleaned from 500 million LinkedIn users were for sale online.