Data breaches can put users’ privacy at risk. It is something that could affect all kinds of services and platforms that we use in our day to day. Hackers take advantage of existing vulnerabilities and collect information that they can later put up for sale on the network. In this article we echo how millions of LinkedIn user accounts are selling.
The data of millions of LinkedIn users, for sale
A hacker has used a technique known as data scraping . It is basically a process in which an attacker can collect a large amount of data from a website, application or service.
Keep in mind that a few months ago a leak of hundreds of millions of user profiles was made public on the Dark Web. It was simply the personal data and not the passwords to access the accounts.
Now, however, a cybercriminal calling himself TomLiner has put up for sale no less than 700 million LinkedIn user records . This includes a wide variety of information about the victim, such as their name, phone number, email, location registration, everything related to professional experience, etc.
This information has great value on the net
We must mention that they are not selling the account itself, since they do not have access passwords. What they do do is sell personal data , something that has great value on the Internet and that could seriously compromise the privacy of those users.
A potential cybercriminal could use all this personal data to launch personalized phishing attacks and the like. It should be noted that some of this personal information contains emails or phone numbers, so they can even use it to contact the victim.
From LinkedIn they indicate that they are analyzing the problem to determine how it could have happened. They indicate that, at least with the initial analysis they have, it is a set of data that they have been able to extract from the service itself and also from other sources . However, they indicate that the data extraction is a violation of their terms of service and that they are working to ensure the privacy of users.
It is very important that the users of this platform always keep common sense in mind and avoid being victims of Phishing attacks. With the data at their disposal, a would-be hacker might be able to launch such an attack by taking advantage of the email address or phone number. They can even pose as a supposed company offering a job or asking for more personal information. We already know that there are privacy problems in social networks and services like this.
We must always bear in mind the importance of preserving our information, of not making mistakes when browsing the Internet. This also includes being prepared for possible data leaks that may be used against us and only accessing official sources and not downloading possible files that we receive or opening links that are insecure.
