LinkedIn Data Available In Alleged Hack Was Scraped From Public Profiles

Days after it was confirmed that data from more than half a billion Facebook accounts had been made available online following a security breach at the social media company; a similarly sized data set claiming to be user account data for LinkedIn users surfaced.

However after a review of the data in the alleged breach, LinkedIn has confirmed that the only data contained is that which is publicly available on user's profiles and, rather than being a security breach or a leak, this is actually the result of a scrape of the LinkedIn website.

That's not something websites can do much to prevent - after all the reason why they exist is to share the information they hold. It is a breach of the LinkedIn terms of service though, which unfortunately means little in this context.

As ever, be careful with what you share on any service which gathers large number of user accounts - the size of the data makes them a high profile target for all sorts of attacks. For LinkedIn that's an especially difficult call to make, given that the value of the service comes from allowing potential recruiters and peers to contact you without having a prior relationship.