LinkedIn security breach 6th June 2012
Time to change your passwords again guys! On June 6th LinkedIn suffered a major security breach, allowing a group of hackers to steal the passwords to a number of accounts on their site. Although LinkedIn have not confirmed the number of passwords stolen, several sites are reporting that over six million accounts could be affected.
In a post on their blog, LinkedIn have said that they do not think that the hackers gained access to the email addresses associated with the passwords, but they have disabled the accounts as a precaution.
In addition to disabling the affected accounts, LinkedIn customer support will be sending two emails to any affected customers – one informing them that they need to change their password, and a second email with some more context on the situation.
LinkedIn have now taken steps to prevent security breaches like this happening in the future, but as always, having a good password is one of the best ways to keep your account secure. By following these steps, you can make sure your LinkedIn (or any other online account) stays secure.
- Don’t tell anyone your password, or write your password down
- Update your passwords once every few months – the longer your password stays the same, the more time someone has to access your account
- Use a different password for each website you use – if one account is compromised, this will make it harder to breach accounts on other sites
- Create strong passwords for your accounts – making your password hard to guess is one of the most important steps you can take. Try mixing capital letters, numbers and punctuation marks into your passwords and don’t use a dictionary word, it makes it much easier for a computer to ‘guess’
If you must use a dictionary word, make it something unrelated to yourself or the website. Relatives’ names, football teams and celebrities are all popular, but weak passwords. A large number of the passwords uncovered from LinkedIn contained the word ‘link’
Remember, if you have any questions or need any help with your technology Geek Squad Agents are available 24/7 via our UK freephone number.