Career network LinkedIn: data of millions of users offered for sale on the network

According to a report, data on more than 500 million LinkedIn users is circulating on a hacker forum. The platform appeases: It is not a data leak in the strict sense.

A few days after information on around 533 million Facebook members was discovered on the web, a hacker forum is again offering a data set with allegedly half a billion user data. The seller claims that the information comes from the career network LinkedIn, as reported by the specialist portal "Cybernews".

LinkedIn stressed after an investigation on Friday night that it was not a data leak. As far as could be investigated so far, no private data had been stolen from accounts. Rather, only publicly available information had been tapped and compiled into the data set for sale, the company, which has been part of the Microsoft Group since 2016, said.

According to "Cybernews," the seller of the alleged LinkedIn data will initially post only two million records online and auction off the full package. LinkedIn confirmed in media reports only that data from its platform was offered for sale. The company, on the other hand, gave no indication that a total of half a billion accounts were affected, according to "Cybernews."

Data theft through automated queries

Basic information such as full name, e-mail address, telephone number, date of birth and city of residence is often used by online networks to clearly identify friends and acquaintances. They are usually not visible to other users, but can be compared via computer interfaces. Criminals have repeatedly found ways to tap such information on a large scale via automated queries with so-called scraping. The platforms are taking action against this - but once the data is in circulation, its spread is almost impossible to stop.

According to the online network, the phone numbers and email addresses of 533 million Facebook users discovered over the weekend were captured by misusing the friend search function before the platform closed a corresponding loophole in the summer of 2019.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chrome targeted by criminals: Why users need to update quickly now

A security vulnerability in Google Chrome is currently being exploited by cyber criminals. Malware could land on your PC through it. Read here how you can protect yourself. The Google Chrome browser is currently struggling with some security vulnerabilities. In a blog post , Google warns about a total of seven vulnerabilities, with the majority of these gaps being classified as a "high" threat to users. The vulnerabilities have been fixed in the latest version of Chrome for Windows, Linux and macOS. If you have Chrome version 90.0.4430.85 installed, it can no longer be exploited. If you have an older version of the browser installed, you should update urgently. You can find the download of the new version below these lines. Smartphone users do not have to be afraid of the security vulnerability. Google has not had to take any security measures here for the time being. The security vulnerability probably remained undiscovered by cyber criminals for the time being. So far, noth...
Read more

Face and voice recognition: Why TikTok wants to be allowed to collect biometric data in the USA

TikTok's privacy policy for the US now mentions the collection of biometric data from faces and voices. The background is likely to be a legal dispute that cost the company $92 million. Neue Datenschutzbestimmungen sind oft eher etwas für Juristen, doch die jüngste Aktualisierung von TikTok sollte alle Nutzerinnen und Nutzer in den USA aufhorchen lassen. Denn in den am 2. Juni aktualisierten Datenschutzbestimmungen für die USA ist ein Abschnitt enthalten, den es zuvor nicht gab. Er lautet übersetzt: »Wir sammeln möglicherweise biometrische Identifikationsmerkmale und biometrische Informationen, wie sie im US-Recht definiert sind, wie etwa von deinem Gesicht und deiner Stimme, aus deinen Inhalten.« Im englischsprachigen Original ist von »faceprint« und »voiceprint« die Rede. »Bevor wir damit anfangen«, frage man jedoch nach dem Einverständnis, wenn dies gesetzlich nötig sei, fügte noch TikTok hinzu. In response to an initial inquiry from "TechCrunch" about the ba...
Read more

Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx: Berlin authority warns against popular video systems

After an initial data protection audit, some video service providers have made improvements to their offerings. But the Berlin data protection commissioner still sees serious shortcomings. The State Commissioner for Data Protection in Berlin (Germany), Maja Smoltczyk, advises against using leading video conferencing systems such as Microsoft Teams, Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, Teamviewer and Cisco WebEx. The reason is a retest of various offerings. After a number of services had already failed a test of data protection requirements last year, a new test of the major providers did not reveal any substantial improvement. Smoltczyk said that she was pleased "that our comments had persuaded so many providers to improve their offerings, in some cases very significantly, in terms of data protection". There are now enough legally compliant services for a wide range of purposes that there is no reason to break data protection law for video conferencing. However, if a provid...
Read more