LinkedIn 700 Million Users Data Leaked Up For Sale

Unknown people sold the user data of 700 million Linkedin users in a popular Darknet forum. So far it is unclear how they got the data – but the authenticity has already been confirmed by a security researcher.

According to the reports, it is one of the largest Linkedin data dumps available on offer. In April of this year, there was already an immense database breach in LinkedIn, which resulted in around 500 million user data records for sale. This is now reported by various tech circles, referring to information from Restore Privacy. Restore Privacy discovered the offer on the Darknet and made it public. The consequences of incidents in the popular network are far-reaching, from identity theft to phishing attacks to social engineering attacks and the like.

How Data Was Leaked?

Last week, the offer appeared in a popular hacker forum. It said they had the data of 700 million Linkedin users, including email addresses, full names, telephone numbers, addresses, and often other personal details.

Data Is Authentic

To support this offer, the provider is posting a sample of the data, which includes the records of a million LinkedIn users. Restore Privacy has checked this data and confirmed its authenticity. The unknown provider claims that its entire database contains the personal information of 700 million LinkedIn users. According to the Linkedin website, there are currently 756 million users. The data leak, therefore, includes around 93 percent of users.

As far as is currently known, the leaked data does not contain any financial details, i.e. no credit cards or legal documents that could be used directly for identity theft or fraud. But that cannot be ruled out.