Over 100 million LinkedIn log-in details up for sale

linkedinLinkedIn is planning a major account reset after it emerged that over 100 million log-ins for the business networking site were for sale, which would allow unauthorised access to users’ profiles.
Quite what anyone buying the log-ins would hope to achieve is not known, although a few more “recommendations” might not go amiss for some.
The site is generally used purely for business purposes, but looking for a new job is also a popular past-time. The worst case scenario would be that criminals could make use of log-in data or see if subscribers had used the same passwords elsewhere.
The IDs were reportedly sourced from a breach four years ago, which had previously been thought to have included a fraction of that number. At the time, LinkedIn said it had reset the accounts of those it thought had been compromised.
LinkedIn now plans to repeat the measure on a much larger scale. “We are taking immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of the accounts impacted, and we will contact those members to reset their passwords,” a spokeswoman for the California-based firm told the BBC.
“We have no indication that this is a result of a new security breach.
“We encourage our members to visit our safety centre to ensure they have two-step verification authentication and to use strong passwords in order to keep their accounts as safe as possible.”