LinkedIn denies data leak

More than 200,000 records belonging to LinkedIn users in Finland are claimed to have been leaked on a hacker forum, according to Twitter rumors. The company has strenuously denied this.

“Over 200k records of Finnish LinkedIn users has been leaked on a hacking forum,” said F-Secure. “The data contains names, phone numbers, email addresses and more. We've alerted our customers. The data could be used in spear-phishing campaigns, so stay vigilant!”

Spear-phishing occurs when criminals use stolen credentials such as email addresses and names to pose as someone trustworthy in a scam targeted at a specific individual. Phone numbers can also be used for telephone-based versions of such con tricks, in a technique commonly known as “vishing” or voice-phishing.

"We can confirm LinkedIn was not hacked or breached, and no private member data was leaked,” said the platform. “Your privacy matters and we work every day to keep the information you trust us with safe and secure. Data scraping, or taking personal data from your profile without your permission, is not allowed.”

The latest claim of hacking, whether true or not, is certainly another headache for LinkedIn. Earlier this month Cybernews reported that data belonging to half a billion of its users was being sold online after it was apparently scraped from the social media giant’s files. That time the hackers leaked two million records as a proof-of-concept taster sample.