Are you a LinkedIn user? If so, you may want to change your password if you have not done so recently.
This security-scare story actually started way back in 2012 when popular business-centric social networking website LinkedIn got themselves hacked, resulting in millions of emails and passwords getting stolen and posted onto the “dark web”.
Back then it was thought that approximately 6.5 million passwords were stolen. That’s a lot. But the news hasn’t gotten better for LinkedIn. That 6.5 million has risen dramatically to a staggering 117 million passwords that were now believed to have been stolen.
The passwords were up for sale on several hacking based websites last week and were believed to have been stolen during the 2012 breach, not a more recent breach.
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Have you changed your LinkedIn password in the last few years? If not, there is a good chance that it’s out there, waiting for someone to get their hands on, so get it changed fast.
Another concern however is that many people – unwisely – use the same password for many different websites. So if you use that same password for other online accounts, it is probably worth changing it for those accounts too, just to be on the safe side.
Additionally, companies that have verified that the data on sale is real have also revealed that the usual terrible passwords like ‘123456’, ‘password’ and ‘linkedin’ were all present in the list of cracked passwords, demonstrating people are still not learning!
So remember to change that password and for future reference, consider turning on 2FA authentication, which means that when someone logs on to your account with your password from an unrecognised device, they will need to confirm the login with a code or pin sent to your phone or email.