Data from 700 million LinkedIn members is for sale on the dark web | Antivirus and Security

Data from 700 million LinkedIn members is for sale on the dark web | Antivirus and Security" title="Data from 700 million LinkedIn members is for sale on the dark web | Antivirus and Security" />

Data from 700 million users of LinkedIn are for sale on the dark web. At least that's what digital security company RestorePrivacy reports. Data does not include passwords or credit card numbers. On the other hand, the information made available may be sufficient to facilitate malicious actions.

THE RestorePrivacy explains that, on June 22, an advertisement for the sale of data from 700 million LinkedIn users appeared on a forum on the dark web — currently, the social network has 756 million active users.

In the ad, the seller posted a sample with records of 1 million users. Upon examining the file, the company found that the database includes data such as:

• Email
• Full name
• User name
• profile link
• Phone number
• Physical address
• geolocation data
• Professional history

An analysis carried out by the company by crossing sample data with public profile information indicates that the information for sale is authentic, linked to real users and includes updated data in 2020 or 2021.

As already informed, passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive data do not make up the base. Even so, the problem worries. The disclosed information may be used for setting up fake user profiles on social networks, creating fraudulent accounts in financial services, social engineering actions, and so on.

LinkedIn denies hacking

Such a large database makes us think of a hacker attack on LinkedIn's systems, but, so far, there is no indication that this has happened. Sought by RestorePrivacy, the data seller reported that they were extracted from the exploitation of a social network API.

This means that the data was collected through data scraping, that is, from a scan that captures publicly available data on a platform.

This is not the first time that LinkedIn has faced such a problem. In April, data from 500 million users of the social network were also exposed through data scraping.

In a statement released on Tuesday (29), LinkedIn denied having suffered a data breach. The company also said that its initial investigation points out that the 700 million records were obtained from its platform and other sites, but supplemented with data improperly disclosed in April.

Any misuse of our members' data, such as scraping, violates LinkedIn's terms of use. When someone tries to get member data and use it for purposes that LinkedIn and its members don't agree with, we work to stop them and hold them accountable.

LinkedIn