I got up today morning only to see a mail from LinkedIn with subject title "Important information about your LinkedIn account" and as always, who wants to know that important information right. So, neglected it for sometime. But, curiosity didn't spare me, and I opened it.

Well, it was a notice of data breach sent by LinkedIn. The company has sent this mail to every LinkedIn user explaining about the latest news that hit the stands regarding the stolen data from LinkedIn being made available online.

First things first, the company claims in the mail that the data made available online was not a new security breach, but in-fact it was an extension to what had happened back in 2012.

According to the company, email IDs, passwords and member IDs of those LinkedIn accounts created before 2012 breach occurred and had not reset their password since then.

Sounds scary if you haven't changed your password yet! I bet I haven't.

So, here's what we can do to safeguard our LinkedIn accounts.

LinkedIn suggests you through the mail to enable the two-step verification and use reset your passwords at the earliest. Keep them as strong as possible. Also, as generally recommended, it would be better if you change your passwords frequently.

While you perform these safety measure, LinkedIn is coming up with a number of ways to encrypt your data. The company uses salted hashes to store passwords and automated tools to identify and block any suspicious activities that might occur on any LinkedIn accounts.

How to find it out...

Having said everything, I found out a website where you can actually findout whether any of your online accounts have been compromised so far or not, and guess what - upon entering my email ID, it was compromised thrice!

Australian security expert Troy Hunt recently updated his entire dataset on his popular website haveibeenpwned.com and this website actually allows you to check as I did. Once you enter your email address, the website go refer its entire data set with over 510,321,085 account details and gives you accurate information.

So, lastly, here's the screenshot of the website when I entered my email ID... As I told earlier, my LinkedIn ID has been compromised too! I am changing my password right away.. are you?

Tags : LinkedIn, Data Breach