Millions of LinkedIn users are said to be exposed to a risk as their passwords have been stolen and posted on a hacker website.
LinkedIn, which has over 150 million active users, has notified its users about the security risks as well as adopting a precautionary step by creating new passwords immediately.
Despite a swift response from the LinkedIn, over past 48 hours there have been growing concerns among LinkedIn users, a professional network platform, about the future safety of their accounts and what is the guarantee that they should not be exposed to such risks again.
Following is the statement issued by LinkedIn describing the state of the affairs and pre-cautionary measures of its account holders.
“We recently became aware that some LinkedIn passwords were compromised and posted on a hacker website. We immediately launched an investigation and we have reason to believe that your password was included in the post.”
To the best of our knowledge, the statement added, no email logins associated with the passwords have been published, nor have we received any verified reports of unauthorized access to any member’s account as a result of this event. “While a small subset of the passwords was decoded and published, we do not believe yours was among them,” it assured.
“The security of your account is very important to us at LinkedIn. As a precaution, we disabled your password, and advise you to take the following steps to reset it. If you reset your password in the last two days, there is no need for further action,” the statement added.
To reset the password, the account holders should follow the steps below: 1: Type www.linkedin.com/settings directly into your browser; 2. Type in your email address and press Sign In, no password necessary and Follow the on-screen directions to reset your password.
It also warned not to reuse old password when creating the new password.
“If you have been using your old LinkedIn password on other sites, we recommend that you change those passwords too. We appreciate your immediate attention to resetting your password and apologize for the inconvenience,” it added.