500 million LinkedIn users’ personal information stolen Hacker discussion forums put on sale

The U.S. workplace social network LinkedIn confirmed on Thursday (8) that the public information of about 500 million users of the platform was put on sale in a hacker discussion forum, stressing that it was not a company data leak and that no private information of users had been made public.

CyberNews recently said that a large number of LinkedIn users account name, email, phone number, gender, job title, other social network links and other public information in the hacker discussion forum for sale, put on sale the person is only registered in January this year to become a discussion forum users, recently posted an article that users only need to pay US$ 2 (about 15.6 Hong Kong dollars) can try to read 2 million LinkedIn users’ personal data, the end of the article and then the words written on the “simultaneous sale of 500 million user data, sold in four figures of U.S. dollars, interested please private message”, it is estimated that the payment in bitcoin.

The total number of LinkedIn users is 675 million, this time the affected users account for more than three-quarters. The company stressed that it is not a user data leakage incident, the affected information only involves the user’s initiative in the personal files of public information, no private information was stolen.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCO) said that it had contacted LinkedIn to understand the incident, and LinkedIn said in its initial response that it was investigating the incident and that users in Hong Kong might be affected, but the number was still under investigation. The PCO will continue to follow up on the incident.