Linkedin: almost three quarters of accounts stolen!

A few days ago now,millions of Facebook users had their personal information released into the wild without their consent. A new crisis for the platform, which reminded us that even the biggest are not always the best protected. This is also the case ofLinkedin, which has also just faced an event of a similar magnitude.

Indeed, the app bought by Microsoft was also the victim of hacking, this time affecting no less than…530 million members. This is quite simply the equivalent of more than seven accounts out of ten, Linkedin currently welcoming 740 million users. Fortunately, passwords are not affected. But to be on the safe side, it is still advisable to change yours: you never know.

A well-oiled mechanism

In reality, there is nothing very surprising about this type of incident occurring. It results above all from an ever-increasing demand for fresh data onprospects. These are required by advertisers or simply founders of businesses that are just starting out. Objective: transform targets into paying customers, or simply learn more about their expectations in order to validate a concept or refine your product.

But then, how are the victims fooled? There is not just one answer. But one of them is simply through applications orextensionsfor web browser to which many Internet users connect for their work. Some then take advantage of this to collect contact details or other key information (first and last name, email address, mobile phone number, etc.) before reselling them.

• Read also:Apple's Twitter account was hacked

Better protect yourself

Other threats to privacy on Linkedin includescraping. Here, they are simply robots that navigate through public pages to collect personal data. These are then matched with other sources to validate as much as possible, in order to compile a complete file like the one that is for sale online at the moment. It is exchanged for a four-figure sum.

Note, however, that the latter is a little dated. It nevertheless remains a gold mine for the growth hacker, this new star profession sought by all FinTechs of the moment.