Personal data of 500 Million LinkedIn users leaked online

The online network for working professionals, LinkedIn recently suffered a massive data breach in which personal data of over 500 million users were leaked on a popular hacker forum.

According to Mashable India, the leaked data consists of personal sensitive information including email IDs, workplace information, contact numbers, full names, account IDs, social media account links, gender details, and more.

The programmer who posted the information dump on the hacker platform is permitting users on the site to see the leaked sample proof for about USD 2 worth of site credits.

Nonetheless, the users who need to purchase the released 500 million client profiles should pay a four-digit sum (in USD) in return, possibly through bitcoins. "Also selling 500M profiles, PM me for price 4 digit USD minimum price," states the post on the site, according to Mashable India.

According to the reports, the hacker claims that he managed to nab the data from LinkedIn. However, it currently remains unclear as to whether the data that has been put up by the hacker is updated or aggregated from other data breaches.

Despite the fact that LinkedIn revealed to CyberNews about no LinkedIn information penetrate, and "no private member account data from LinkedIn was included", the orgzation later affirmed to a publication that there was a dataset of public information scraped from the platform.

"While we're still investigating this issue, the posted dataset appears to include publicly viewable information that was scraped from LinkedIn combined with data aggregated from other websites or compes," a LinkedIn spokesperson told.

The statement further continued, "Scraping our members' data from LinkedIn violates our terms of service and we are constantly working to protect our members and their data."

( With inputs from ANI )