Remember the LinkedIN data breach?

Most of the data breaches have been with companies that had personal data such social security numbers and credit card accounts and passwords.  The list includes AT&T, Global Payments, Ninetendo, Sony, and Zappos.  The latest breach occurred on June 6, 2012 to 6.5 million of LinkedIn’s account passwords.

LinkedIn is a business networking site with 100 million users. The breach was detected when the hackers posted the passwords on a Russian hacker forum asking for assistance in cracking the passwords. Security experts have predicted that it won’t take long to crack all 6.5 million passwords.

Since there isn’t any personal information in LinkedIn’s data base such as social security numbers, bank account numbers and credit card numbers, you may not think there is a reason to be concerned.  This could be one of the reasons LinkedIn did not make such an issue of this, but it is usually because of the risk involved and the negative publicity.

Key issues

There are two key issues to keep in mind:

1. LinkedIn is tied into both Facebook and Twitter, so the hackers can also get into other social networking accounts. Some Facebook users post personal information such as birth date, pet names and family names that are often used as security questions to verify users.

2. Some people use the same password consistently for everything.  This password could be the same for online banking, ATMs, debit cards, etc.  This can provide identity thieves the information they need to hack many of other accounts, especially if they also have access to an email address.  It has not been confirmed if email addresses were hacked also.

Change your password

Even though LinkedIn contacted those affected, everyone who has a LinkedIn account was advised to change their password immediately.  This new password should be unique, not easily determined, and contain both letters and numbers; one containing random letters and numbers is the best.  You can change your password at the LinkedIn website homepage, click on “Settings” and select “Password Change” and then you can change your password.

Since online transactions are a way of life, there will be more chances for your identity to be stolen. This is probably a good time to review the passwords you use for all of your accounts and determine whether you should change them.

Credit Reporting Expert, John Ulzheimer, is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.  Follow him on Twitter here.

Categorised in: Credit Monitoring, Financial, Identity Theft

This post was written by John Ulzheimer