Just only a week ago, it was reported that the personal data of 533 million Facebook users, including Mark Zuckerberg’s data, was leaked online. Cybernews has today reported that the same incident has occurred with networking website LinkedIn, with personal data of over 530 million LinkedIn users have leaked online.

LinkedIn has nearly 740 million users, which means data of around two-third of users have leaked online. Information of around 2 million accounts has been put as proof on the dark web. The hacker is asking for a four-digit amount (in USD) in exchange for the data breach, in the form of Bitcoins.

The leaked data includes LinkedIn IDs, full names, email addresses, phone numbers, genders, links to LinkedIn profiles, and links to other social media profiles. In an official statement, LinkedIn has said that the data of nearly 500 million users has been obtained from other services.

We have investigated an alleged set of LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale and have determined that it is actually an aggregation of data from a number of websites and companies. It does include publicly viewable member profile data that appears to have been scraped from LinkedIn.

Any misuse of our members’ data, such as scraping, violates LinkedIn terms of service. When anyone tries to take member data and use it for purposes LinkedIn and our members haven’t agreed to, we work to stop them and hold them accountable.

Like Facebook’s data breach, it seems like that the data leaked is not up-to-date and might be some years ago.

It’s unclear whether the threat actor is selling up-to-date LinkedIn profiles, or if the data has been taken or aggregated from a previous breach suffered by LinkedIn or other companies.

Even though the report claims the user passwords have not been compromised, it is encouraged to reset your LinkedIn password, and even enable 2FA (Two Factor Authentication).

What precautions do you take while using these social media websites? Let us know in the comments section below!