Massive LinkedIn Breach Allegedly Exposes 700 Million Users: Salaries, Geolocation, And Other Sensitive Infos!
TechTimes.com, By Griffin Davis, Posted August 3rd 2021
A new LinkedIn breach allegedly exposes more than 92% of its total users. Since the popular social media platform currently has a total of 756 million users, this means that more than 700 million people are using the application.
On the other hand, involved security experts claimed that the hackers behind the massive breach might have posted a sample of the app’s 1 million records.
The security experts at RestorePrivacy, a security firm that focuses on online privacy restoration, said that the hackers might have leaked LinkedIn users’ physical addresses, geolocation data, inferred salaries, phone numbers, and other sensitive information.
“So far in 2021, we have already seen two separate incidents where bad actors have exploited the professional networking platform to harvest vast amounts of user data,” said RestorePrivacy’s security researchers.
“The implications of this are far-ranging, from identity theft to phishing attacks, social engineering attacks, and more,” they added.
LinkedIn’s Details Possibly Leaked
Right now, various hackers and other online criminals are developing new malware and other malicious files to attack many victims. These include the new “Minecraft” mod malware, as well as the latest DarkRadiation ransomware.
Now, LinkedIn fell as one of the victims of cyberhacking. 9To5Mac‘s latest report provided the sensitive information that could have been leaked:
- Physical addresses
- Personal and professional experience/background
- Genders
- Email Addresses
- Full names
- Phone numbers
- Other social media accounts and usernames
- Geolocation records
- LinkedIn username and profile URL
On the other hand, security experts confirmed that the massive breach was not able to leak the app’s user passwords. Although this is the case, the mentioned information is still important, making the new breach a large one.
They explained that hackers could use these sensitive details to fool the users into providing their login credentials. On the other hand, LinkedIn confirmed that the first massive breach was also able to acquire 500 million of its records.
Protecting Your LinkedIn Account
Defending Digital explained that you can enhance your account’s security by tweaking its LinkedIn Settings. The first and most important thing you can do is improve your password.
This means that you need to create one with more than 20 characters and consists of upper and lower cases and special characters. On the other hand, you can also use the app’s two-step verification feature. This will send you a code that needs to be activated whenever you are accessing your account.
Aside from these two methods, you can also try making your account private so that other users will not see your personal information.
For more news updates about the second LinkedIn breach and other social media platform security threats, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.
