Francis Muli
LinkedIn users’ personal data has reportedly been compromised for a second time this year. Personal details belonging to at least 700 million users is reportedly up for sale on the dark web.
Restore privacy reports that LinkedIn confirmed the incident, saying the hackers obtained the data from their servers and other sources. At least 700 profiles accounting for 92 percent of the accounts were exposed.
The hacker gained access to LinkedIn API (Application Programming Interface), obtained the data, and proceeded to put them up for sale after posting a sample of 1.2 million profiles.
Read: 500 Million LinkedIn Users’ Personal Data Up for Sale on Hacker Site
According to Restore Privacy, the samples contained the following data:
- 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
Below is a screenshot from one of the samples put up for sale.
Read also: Microsoft Reportedly Tried to Acquire Pinterest in Efforts to Push Azure Cloud Services
LinkedIn issued a statement regarding the issue, and while they confirm that data was obtained from their servers and other sources, they refute any claims of a data breach. The company says that no Login credentials have been exposed.
“Our teams have investigated a set of alleged LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale. We want to be clear that this is not a data breach and no private LinkedIn member data was exposed. 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.”
LinkedIn has about 756 million users, meaning at least 92 percent of users may have their personal data compromised.
The company reported in April this year that a similar incident had occurred. In its statement at the time, the company also said that there was no privacy breach, but that data had been scrapped.
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