LinkedIn has been reported to have been hacked by a massive data breach that might have affected around 700 million users, more than 92% of its total consumers.  

(Photo : Photo by studioEAST/Getty Images)
Young man is using the LinkedIn Corp. app that is displayed on an Apple Inc. iPad the biggest online professional-networking service on October 20, 2017 in Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Security experts claimed that the giant Facebook-owned networking site suffered from a massive breach that leaked users' genders, email addresses, physical addresses, geolocation records, and other sensitive information. 

Although RestorePrivacy, the security firm that first discovered the leaked data, confirmed that passwords were not acquired, some critics claimed that the leaked details could be used to fool LinkedIn users. 

However, the giant networking site claimed that LinkedIn was not hacked at all. 

"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," said LinkedIn via its official blog post. 

LinkedIn Massive Data Breach Is Not Real? 

According to LinkedIn's Pressroom, the alleged LinkedIn data breach did not really happen. The giant platform added no private LinkedIn member data was exposed as well. 

(Photo : Photo credit should read MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images)
This illustration picture taken on July 24, 2019 in Paris shows the logo of the US social network application Linkedin on the screen of a tablet. (Photo by Martin BUREAU / AFP)

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"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," added the networking platform. 

Back on Apr. 8, the company explained that the scraped data includes publicly viewable member profile data. On the other hand, LinkedIn explained that it will make serious efforts to stop data scraping in its platform. 

Sonit Jain, the CEO of GajShield Infotech, explained that users' data on various online applications are as vulnerable as the app they are using. He added that any app vulnerability, or even an API flaw, could lead to a massive data breach.  

LinkedIn's Previous Breaches

IOL reported that LinkedIn already suffered from previous security breaches. One of them was able to leak more than 500 million users. Experts claimed that their sensitive credentials were sold online. 

On the other hand, another online hack leaked more than 2 million LinkedIn records as proof-of-concept samples by the hackers behind the breach. To avoid this, Jain explained that users should always avoid sharing confidential data on any public online platforms. This means that they should not do this even in DMs or personal chats. 

For more news updates about LinkedIn's data breach and other security threats, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.  

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Written by: Griffin Davis

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