The breach closely follows other instances of massive data leaks from firms like Dominos, Mobikwik, and Big Basket. Data belonging to 700 million people were put on sale on the dark web by a hacker who claimed to have obtained them from professional networking site LinkedIn’s application programming interface (API), according to a report by RestorePrivacy. The hacker had posted online, with 1 million users’ data as a sample, asking for a 4-figure US dollar sum (which can range from Rs 75,000 to Rs 7.5 lakh) to be deposited into an escrow account for the entire data. LinkedIn has since denied any breach of private data, saying that it is a part of publicly viewable member profile data. In a statement posted on its website, LinkedIn said, “Our initial investigation has found that this data was scraped from LinkedIn and other various websites, and includes the same data reported earlier this year in our April 2021 scraping update.” Data of 500 million users were exposed in April when a hacker posted them up for sale on the dark web in exchange for bitcoins. The Microsoft-owned company has 756 million users worldwide and thus, the latest breach could potentially impact 92 percent of its users. A sample data set of 1 million users was posted which upon examination, by 9to5Mac, included- Email Addresses Full names Phone numbers Physical addresses Geolocation records LinkedIn username and profile URL Personal and professional experience/background Genders Other social media accounts and usernames Concerns about increased vulnerability Prasad T,…
