LinkedIn reportedly suffers massive data leak exposing 700M accounts

This is LinkedIn's second breach this year.

What you need to know

• LinkedIn reportedly suffered a massive data breach.
• A hacker is selling the information of over 700 million LinkedIn accounts.
• Back in April, LinkedIn suffered a similar breach exposing more than 500 million accounts.

LinkedIn has reportedly suffered a massive data breach, exposing the data of more than 700 million of its users, or roughly 92% of its user-base. The breach was first reported by Restore Privacy.

The data was obtained by a hacker who exploited the official LinkedIn API. The hacker is currently selling the information online and posted a sample of the data on June 22, containing the information of 1 million users. The leaked user data includes the following 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

For now, it doesn't appear that login credentials or sensitive financial information are part of the leak. However, the data does include inferred salaries, and the obtained information could still pose a threat to users.

According to Restore Privacy, the information is accurate and up-to-date as of 2020 and 2021 and can put LinkedIn users at risk of identity theft. "Additionally, bad actors can use the available data, particularly usernames, emails, and personal information, to gain access to other accounts."

This isn't the first leak that LinkedIn has suffered this year. In April, the social networking platform suffered a similar data leak affected 500 million accounts. However, according to LinkedIn, the information was an "aggregation of data from a number of websites and companies" and only included publicly viewable user information from the site. Facebook also dealt with a major leak this year from a breach that occurred in 2019.

We've reached out to LinkedIn for a comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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