[HN Gopher] New LinkedIn Data Leak Leaves 700M Users Exposed
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       New LinkedIn Data Leak Leaves 700M Users Exposed
        
       Author : gargs
       Score  : 418 points
       Date   : 2021-06-29 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (restoreprivacy.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (restoreprivacy.com)
        
       | literallyaduck wrote:
       | If Microsoft can't safely code its apis what hope does anyone
       | else have?
        
         | southerntofu wrote:
         | Microsoft have never exactly had a reputation of security-
         | conscious developments. However you do have a point: building
         | secure software is close to impossible, and that's why we
         | should build software that collects the smallest amount
         | possible of personal information.
        
         | colllectorof wrote:
         | This is an excellent question/framing. The security model used
         | in the industry right now is insane and doomed to fail, and yet
         | it is relentlessly pushed forth and defended.
        
       | idorosen wrote:
       | duplicate: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27675648 -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674393
        
       | greenie_beans wrote:
       | My lord, how many times has this happened to LinkedIn? Fuckin
       | ridiculous. Need some public policy to hold these companies more
       | accountable when this happens, so it will happen less.
        
       | atlgator wrote:
       | How does LinkedIn know my facebook username if I've never linked
       | them? How does it infer salary and is it provided to recruiters
       | unverified?
        
       | eli wrote:
       | Isn't this just data that people choose to make public on
       | linkedin?
        
         | fart32 wrote:
         | I wonder. I definitelly don't have my phone number and e-mail
         | address visible to public (this has a purpose - if someone can
         | find it, it means they at least spent 30 seconds of their life
         | to issue a search query in Google) and I think most people
         | don't as well. But that's the same thing with FB 2019 - my
         | phone number was leaked, but I never made it public. Why would
         | I.
        
       | prennert wrote:
       | The biggest issue: you cannot not give them your personal data
       | that they then loose.
       | 
       | Let me contribute with an anecdote from yesterday (slightly off-
       | topic but I promise to get around to it at the end). So just
       | yesterday I needed to create a Microsoft account to try out Teams
       | which is supposedly free. (I have avoided it so far, but my GF
       | has been asked to use it for an interview and we wanted to do a
       | tech test run before). Of course, the UI on the website assumes
       | (!) that you already have a Microsoft account. It will let you
       | create a Teams account that will fail the login if you do not
       | have a Microsoft account and then sends you around in a Byzantine
       | loop without telling you: Look you need a Microsoft account to
       | use Teams. It looks to me as it just creates a shallow alias or
       | something without root reference. This is dark patterns all over
       | the place.
       | 
       | Anyway, a bit more on topic, I am course using my spam email for
       | this account, but then they ask for my phone number. This is
       | really an issue, because except if I get a burner phone, my
       | personal data is linked with an account of a company I do not
       | trust. After witnessing then how bad teams is almost 1.5 years
       | after everyone is working remotely, (wow their web client does
       | not allow you to share webcam and a window/screen at the same
       | time, while their native client makes it super hard to share
       | content while still seeing the people who you present to), I
       | realised
       | 
       | 1. How privileged I am not having to use Microsoft products (need
       | to remember to charge extra, whenever asks me do a job that
       | involves Microsoft products)
       | 
       | 2. How anti-competitive Microsoft still is (you cannot login to
       | Teams, MS web auth, in Chromium incognito mode, and it needs a
       | ton of cookie domains whitelisted, even then it does not work)
       | 
       | 3. How (and this is not Microsoft specific) difficult it is to
       | not hand over personal data to companies that provide a utility-
       | like service that they pretend is free (so everybody can pretend
       | they are inclusive when they use these services)
       | 
       | 4. An then literally a day later it turns out I am not paranoid
       | not trusting Microsoft (and I guess other companies, big or
       | small) with my data, because they are going to loose it sooner or
       | later.
       | 
       | Edit: I just logged back into this MS account. They dont even use
       | the phone number as "2FA". They only send you a text when you
       | register, not for subsequent logins. It looks to me as they just
       | collect it to make sure they really have some personal data to
       | loose..
        
         | canadaduane wrote:
         | The generous interpretation is that they need a way to give
         | people something free while avoiding giving bots/spammers
         | something free. You could point to CAPTCHA as a way to do this
         | anonymously, but as far as I can tell, CAPTCHA has largely been
         | broken by successful machine learning algos (most of the web
         | scraping services I have seen offer "free CAPTCHA defeat" as a
         | perk of buying their service).
        
         | jolmg wrote:
         | I wouldn't do this if it were just a typo, but since you did it
         | multiple times, I thought I should inform you that you mean
         | "lose", not "loose".
        
       | asdadsdad wrote:
       | Then they complain when people scrape their site...
        
       | bennyp101 wrote:
       | Is this on top of the 500M in April?
       | 
       | https://cybernews.com/news/stolen-data-of-500-million-linked...
       | 
       | Or is this a follow on with the rest of the data?
       | 
       | Either way, it's pretty shoddy that they haven't put a stop to it
        
         | arp242 wrote:
         | I think we finally know what that bowl of petunias meant with
         | "oh no, not again".
        
           | keville wrote:
           | (That bit is explained in _Life, the Universe and Everything_
           | )
        
       | kristopolous wrote:
       | don't put any real info on those things beyond like your name ...
       | really.
        
       | archsurface wrote:
       | But you're fine because you didn't give them much personal data.
       | Because by now you're perfectly aware of this scenario. So you
       | take your privacy seriously.
        
       | qjighap wrote:
       | I used to use linked'in@mycustomdomain.com. It (slightly) broke
       | the interface for reasons I won't understand, but I eventually
       | got lazy and changed it to a normal email. The extra page
       | refreshes were driving me crazy. Seems I should have kept it.
        
       | CountDrewku wrote:
       | This is just basically the data that's publicly available anyway
       | unless you've locked down your profile. That sort of defeats the
       | purpose of LinkedIn though since you're trying to get people to
       | contact you about jobs etc.
       | 
       | I wish LinkedIn would just go away, it's turning less into a job
       | specific site and more of another facebook full of idiotic
       | political posts etc. I'd rather not have to deal with it at all
       | but it seems employers still sort of expect you to use it.
        
         | lanstin wrote:
         | My actual goal with LinkedIn is to be able to search people
         | whom I have worked with that now work with some random company
         | I am curious in now. "Oh, huh, LinkedIn had a leak, who do I
         | know there, oh, they were reasonable people, probably an error
         | then." I must confess a certain curiosity on the inferred
         | salaries I wonder how accurate they are and if we will see the
         | whole data dump at some point.
        
       | antpls wrote:
       | That doesn't look like a "leak", but more like the usual mass
       | scraping of APIs.
       | 
       | An actual data leak from a breach would contain password hashes
       | and private messages.
       | 
       | It means somehow, people can access that "leaked" data anyway,
       | either with APIs or by paying LinkedIn
        
       | kleinsch wrote:
       | Where are all the folks who were complaining about the LinkedIn
       | anti-scraping court case destroying the open web? This is what
       | LinkedIn is fighting against.
        
         | 101_101 wrote:
         | You want to defend a company that uses shitty dark patterns?
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | It is easy for hacker(s) to claim they got this data from
         | scraping. From the article, we can't be confident that this is
         | true (completely or in part).
        
         | southerntofu wrote:
         | Scraping the open web is NOT the same as accessing privileged
         | APIs to collect private information. If LinkedIn made their
         | pages accessible to anyone as a sort of public service (as they
         | used to), people would think twice what data to put on there.
         | 
         | The problem is the same as with Facebook: they pretend the data
         | is private and secure, then let people siphon it away. Public
         | and private networks are both fine, but huge corporations
         | trying to mix both usually end up with the worst of both
         | worlds.
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | > Where are all the folks who were complaining about the
         | LinkedIn anti-scraping court case destroying the open web? This
         | is what LinkedIn is fighting against.
         | 
         | I find comments of the form "where are all the folks who were
         | complaining..." to be tiresome. Asking "where are all the
         | folks" suggest that "all the folks" don't exist because... you
         | don't see them on Hacker News? ... because ... you want to make
         | a dig at LinkedIn? ... because [reasons]?
         | 
         | Unless I'm missing something (let me know), this comment seems
         | like a rant based on speculation. Why believe a hacker who says
         | they got this from scraping?
         | 
         | I'm not defending LinkedIn, to be clear. I'm asking for more
         | {elaboration, logic, specificity} and less rhetoric in the
         | comments here.
        
       | Sebb767 wrote:
       | > making this one of the largest LinkedIn data leaks to date.
       | 
       |  _one of_.
       | 
       | This is insane.
        
         | SavageBeast wrote:
         | Kinda makes you want to transfer all your cloud ops to Azure
         | doesn't it.
        
           | HatchedLake721 wrote:
           | Nice try Satya Nadella
        
       | Santosh83 wrote:
       | If I put on my thickest tinfoil hat, I might even think these
       | continuous data leaks are deliberately happening to get
       | users/consumers normalised towards expecting zero privacy or
       | corporate accountability going forward.
        
         | calotow wrote:
         | By including a description of your supposed hat, you kind of
         | pre-negate the content of your post.
        
       | shoto_io wrote:
       | Is this a "real" leak or "just" scraped profiles?
        
         | ParanoidalMouse wrote:
         | Looks like scraped with additional data from other sources.
         | Linkedin doesn't have your Facebook account, but it included in
         | the database sample
        
           | shoto_io wrote:
           | Augmented data!
        
       | stuff4ben wrote:
       | But is this really a problem? LinkedIn is "advertising for
       | yourself", presumably to get a job. With the exception of my
       | phone number, I'm ok with the world knowing this information
       | about me. It's the equivalent of a phone book and I'm putting
       | myself out there and advertising myself in the hopes of getting a
       | job.
        
         | sixothree wrote:
         | Do you care to share some of your private messages here in this
         | thread?
        
         | dnate wrote:
         | I feel like the lines between a data leak and large scale
         | scraping are getting blurred. At least in their impact for the
         | user. Which is a bad thing as it will support the "so what"
         | attitude that many people have toward their data.
         | 
         | It is a fact that all this data is already being crawled by bot
         | nets.
         | 
         | If all data is leaked at once, this is similar to a large scale
         | successful crawling of the site. At least from a user
         | perspective.
         | 
         | So I get what you are saying. It sounds more dramatic than it
         | actually is. It is still a massive leak. But from a pool that
         | scummy businesses have been thoroughly scooping from already
         | anyway.
        
           | unishark wrote:
           | Are these details publicly-available for the scraping though?
           | 
           | I'd be suspicious it was an employee with internal access to
           | the data or someone who had hacked such an employee's
           | computer. Of course they wouldn't admit such criminal act and
           | risk getting caught, they'd claim a route anyone could use.
        
             | tjpnz wrote:
             | If the geolocation data is fine grained I would hope not.
        
         | southerntofu wrote:
         | > LinkedIn is "advertising for yourself"
         | 
         | Not anymore, really. For years now you can't view someone's
         | profile without logging in.
        
           | emodendroket wrote:
           | Yeah but the people who want to find you there have accounts.
        
         | whoomp12342 wrote:
         | My understanding is that it was "advertise yourself within your
         | network". I dont want my name and face on a billboard for just
         | anyone....
         | 
         | Also, keep in mind that LI has contact information and
         | passwords people might re-use
        
           | emodendroket wrote:
           | Not really. Anyone who has an account can see profile. It's
           | been a go-to for journalists for a long time.
        
             | x4e wrote:
             | You can set your profile to only be viewable to connections
             | or second degree connections
        
               | salt-thrower wrote:
               | You can also "hibernate" your account to disable it
               | completely until you log in again. I just did this; my
               | go-forward strategy will be to resurface and collect
               | connections anytime I switch jobs, then hibernate it
               | again when I no longer need it. That way it can serve its
               | only real function of being a face for my job
               | applications, and can be made invisible all other times.
        
               | emodendroket wrote:
               | More than half the value is letting people reach out to
               | you when you're not actively looking. Otherwise let them
               | use your resume.
        
         | onion2k wrote:
         | I have no problem with people accessing my data, but only so
         | long as it's people who have a valid reason to access that
         | data. In the case of LinkedIn, I don't mind my connections,
         | coworkers, and (reluctantly) recruiters seeing what's on my
         | resume. I do mind a random hacker accessing that information,
         | selling it to anyone who'll buy, and those people then using
         | that data for things that _probably aren 't related to offering
         | me employment._
        
           | emodendroket wrote:
           | How do you know someone accessing your data through the Web
           | site is a recruiter?
        
             | onion2k wrote:
             | I look their details up in this spreadsheet of 700 million
             | people I've got.
        
         | fogetti wrote:
         | Well I can see your point, but this is not exactly the same.
         | 
         | As a thought experiment imagine that someone now builds a
         | website called Linkedout and they post your profile with a
         | layover animation resembling a big red stamp which reads
         | 'Slacker'. I guess you are not OK with THAT information about
         | you.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | Isn't that what someone that works at Slack? If they're
           | getting basic employment details that badly wrong, then
           | they're not very useful.
        
           | agustif wrote:
           | Oh funny I actually thought about same name
           | 
           | LinkedOut: A decentralized 'paid' job profile site for
           | professionals, not recruiters. Where you decide who can see
           | your profile/data and contact you.
           | 
           | I might just build this,but with a better name, lol
        
             | rapnie wrote:
             | You might contribute to Flockingbird who are building that
             | for the Fediverse.
             | 
             | https://flockingbird.social
        
         | emodendroket wrote:
         | My thoughts exactly. Given the nature of LinkedIn there is
         | absolutely nothing I'd put there that I didn't want others to
         | see.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | Isn't the revealing thing about these leaks not the data that
           | you provided but the data they have associated to you from
           | other means?
        
         | martinkraft wrote:
         | It's good to hear that it hasn't affected you personally, but
         | the severity of the leak must be assessed based on the privacy
         | that was reasonably expected by users. LinkedIn has not met
         | their duty to protect their personal information and that alone
         | is enough to say: yes, it's a problem.
        
           | stuff4ben wrote:
           | Yeah I agree that LI hasn't done a great job of protecting
           | their data from being misused. But that's the nature of
           | social networks though, data is to be shared in order to
           | build the network. As another commenter said, just don't put
           | in anything you don't want people to find out. Absolute
           | privacy cannot be achieved when you give out your information
           | willingly. To paraphrase WOPR, "the only way to win the game
           | is to not play."
        
             | martinkraft wrote:
             | What about your job hunt status, openings you've applied
             | to, DMs?
        
         | streamofdigits wrote:
         | if you look at the sample image there are data points like
         | "inferred salaries", "inferred years of experience", number of
         | connections (and possibly other stuff) that somebody may or may
         | not have wanted to advertise to the universe.
         | 
         | the leaking of semi-public data (over which we may have some
         | control) alongside "inferred bits" and behavioral data (over
         | which we don't) and combined with other legally or illegally
         | obtained sources means that individuals are facing an
         | information environment where long held assumptions about who
         | knows what no longer hold.
         | 
         | lots of people still don't seem to realize what a crushing
         | downgrade it is in all senses (economic, social, political) to
         | be a transparent, mined entity with no sovereignty
        
           | dannyw wrote:
           | What do you think is a good solution to this problem?
        
             | streamofdigits wrote:
             | there are many ways to skin this cat if one was motivated
             | enough to put their mind to it... but some suggestions
             | anyway:
             | 
             | never have 700M profiles in one place. decentralization by
             | default - large scale centralization only when absolutely
             | needed and with rigorous controls as a public (or highly
             | regulated) good.
             | 
             | never create portable / tradeable behavioral profiles that
             | can be linked to individuals. what can happen _will_ happen
             | and _is_ happening.
             | 
             | never offer trivial free services in exchange for
             | significant private data. establish a respectful and
             | healthy client/user relation without hidden third parties
             | in the loop
        
         | nuker wrote:
         | > With the exception of my phone number
         | 
         | You can get it from 2019 FB leak of 533M accounts, dumped for
         | free this April. My boss is in there and phone number is
         | correct.
        
           | fart32 wrote:
           | I'm there and even received few scam calls from foreign
           | countries. Ironically, I cancelled my account in 2019.
        
         | diarrhea wrote:
         | I imagine most people do not share your attitude, me included.
         | Especially profile sections set to private staying that way
         | needs to be trusted.
        
           | rapnie wrote:
           | And emails not falling in the hands of spammers is always
           | nice.
        
       | nzealand wrote:
       | This hack includes inferred salary, facebook username, mobile
       | number, geo location...
       | 
       | None of this is publicly available.
       | 
       | None of this can even be downloaded by myself when I get a copy
       | of all my data from linkedin...
       | 
       | https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/50191/download...
       | 
       | So I have no idea what information about myself was leaked in
       | this hack
        
         | superjan wrote:
         | Inferred salary would be useful for recruiters, perhaps they
         | used recruiter accounts to scrape it?
        
         | nojito wrote:
         | Inferred salary is from salary estimates based on job titles.
         | It isn't tied to your personal data IIRC.
         | 
         | It's likely that an API endpoint was found and all the data was
         | siphoned off.
        
           | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
           | > Inferred salary is from salary estimates based on job
           | titles. It isn't tied to your personal data IIRC.
           | 
           | How do you know?
           | 
           | https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/4786/source-
           | an...
           | 
           | >When we don't have member-submitted data, salary insights
           | are inferred using data between similar companies, job
           | titles, location, and other job attributes.
           | 
           | With enough "job attributes", you can easily tie things down
           | to an individual: who worked as <position> at <company> in
           | <city> from <start_date> to <end_date>, doing
           | <job_description> with <colleagues>?
        
             | nojito wrote:
             | Because you get salary insights when you look at job
             | postings which means it's an API endpoint.
        
           | nzealand wrote:
           | The same API that was used in the April breach.
           | 
           | https://restoreprivacy.com/linkedin-data-leak-700-million-
           | us...
           | 
           | Even if you don't considered inferred salary directly tied to
           | you as "personal data," surely you consider geo location
           | personal data?
           | 
           | Also, aren't you even slightly outraged that you can't even
           | download data that has been hacked and released into the
           | wild?
           | 
           | Or outraged by the fact that you can only download data you
           | have given directly to a service provider, but that the
           | service provider will happily tell 3rd parties about your
           | shadow profiles?
        
             | nojito wrote:
             | The geolocation in the response looks like the location you
             | set in your LinkedIn profile.
             | 
             | Is there anything that shows that it's your actual geo
             | location when you access LinkedIn?
        
       | neya wrote:
       | Many of you may not know, But most recently, even Domino's Pizza
       | (India) had a breach and they kept denying it ever happened until
       | the hackers finally made a search engine where anyone could
       | search through the entire database. And Domino's finally released
       | some statement in some obscure part of their website. NONE of the
       | users who were affected were notified directly. Many even don't
       | know that this happened. What's worse is the data contained your
       | precise house location and location data in general with co-
       | ordinates. So, the hackers know your phone, your address, where
       | you live, where you go to, been to and how much you're actually
       | worth. It has been claimed financial data (credit cards) were
       | stolen as well, but Domino's denies it till date and of course no
       | one should trust them, given their history.
       | 
       | So, in essence, this LinkedIn breach is also the same to me.
       | Companies literally make you an attack target for hackers and
       | don't even bother telling you. I don't know about you guys, I
       | haven't received a single email from LinkedIn about this yet. How
       | can we combat this dangerous behaviour of companies hiding their
       | incompetencies from their customers? I thought of litigation and
       | I almost sued Domino's, but who am I kidding? These cases could
       | go on for years while they keep making people attack targets of
       | hackers. And add to that corruption, and other variables. I don't
       | know of what could be done to such companies. Boycotting helps,
       | but imagine, more than half your customers don't know why the
       | rest are boycotting and that's in your favor.
        
       | ricardo81 wrote:
       | Not surprising really.
       | 
       | A few years back Hotmail/Outlook were returning people's
       | Twitter/LinkedIn handles for emails sent/received. It had been
       | noticed you could scrape that fairly easily at scale. With one
       | email account you could check up to 30000 email addresses before
       | being flagged by Outlook.
       | 
       | Slightly longer ago you could simply iterate 1...n on LinkedIn
       | URLs to find someone's profile, by converting the number to
       | base12, you'd be redirected to the person's public URL.
       | 
       | Also their bulk contact upload. Take any data leak of email
       | addresses, bulk upload them as contacts and then correlate email
       | addresses to social profiles.
       | 
       | Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all bad in that regard on the
       | last method, though Facebook at least do not return people's URLs
       | along with your contact upload (you're expected to know the
       | person's face/name to decide whether you'd want to connect). The
       | take away is that once you sign up, whatever information you put
       | on your profile/account is pretty much available to anyone who
       | wants it enough - and clearly there are plenty bad actors who
       | want it. Obviously these social networks want to expand their
       | network, but they also make it much more easy for data harvesting
       | at unprecedented scale.
        
         | Zenst wrote:
         | > Also their bulk contact upload. Take any data leak of email
         | addresses, bulk upload them as contacts and then correlate
         | email addresses to social profiles.
         | 
         | This is one of those functionality aspects all these
         | social/networking sites fall foul of one way or another, be
         | email or phone number relational suggestions. That and the
         | aspect of this scraping of phone numbers or emails - even with
         | the users permission, kinda moots the owner of those email and
         | phone details. But does seem that once you give anybody your
         | email or phone number, it kinda one way or another falls into
         | the public domain level of privacy. Heck how many contact
         | details via email or phone numbers do these sites hold on
         | people who never even held an account with them.
         | 
         | Be nice if the law and data privacy had some global standards
         | as this region/country by country aspect does nobody any good
         | and in a World in which taxation works with the same model, do
         | we really want to let data protection end up with data havens
         | in much the same way as tax does.
        
           | ricardo81 wrote:
           | Agreed. One of the poorer aspects of those 'functionalities'
           | is friends of friends details get added, i.e. sharing your
           | phone contacts or email contacts. There's people not on those
           | networks that have a definite amount of information about
           | them on there anyway.
        
       | danielEM wrote:
       | Feels a bit ackward to admit it nowadays, when nearly every job
       | offer for IT proffessionals requires to provide LI profile link.
       | But stopped using linkedin after first their leak with
       | unencrypted passwords and not informing about it for months.
        
       | lazyweb wrote:
       | Hah, I was just logging into linkedin again after some months,
       | looking at the landing page for a bit (before login). Wasn't
       | aware they let you create accounts with passwords as short as six
       | (!) characters.
        
       | AzzieElbab wrote:
       | The article does not explain what info beyond public profiles had
       | been stolen. You can already google search LinkedIn making this
       | data leak very low impact
        
         | whoomp12342 wrote:
         | it bypasses privacy settings users may have set up. e.g. not
         | everyone can see my contact info
        
         | syntaxstic wrote:
         | https://github.com/vysecurity/LinkedInt
        
         | emodendroket wrote:
         | Seems like just the phone number and email.
        
           | AzzieElbab wrote:
           | Yeah missed that. My LinkedIn api experience is dated, are
           | those visible via api?
        
             | ta988 wrote:
             | The Linkedin API is dated. So you are probably up to date
             | ;)
        
             | emodendroket wrote:
             | Kind of ambiguous from the article's description of
             | "exploiting the API."
        
       | ianpurton wrote:
       | So the attacker claims to have harvested the data via the API.
       | Looks like you can get any user profile if you're an approved
       | developer.
       | 
       | Possible the attacker slowly downloaded the whole database.
        
       | specialist wrote:
       | FWIW, I've been scrubbing my social profiles. LinkedIn, Yelp,
       | Facebook, etc.
       | 
       | Barest of bones. Removing all connections, photos, posts,
       | personal details. (I know the damage is already done. The
       | aggregators never really delete anything.)
       | 
       | Why not just out right delete my profiles? I'm squatting. To
       | ensure they're not used as socket puppets.
       | 
       | After a beloved coworker passed, their profile got highjacked.
       | Ten years later, I'm still so angry about it that I could just
       | spit.
        
         | willis936 wrote:
         | >The aggregators never really delete anything.
         | 
         | Sort of. Data that is 5+ years old is pretty stale. How many
         | things _don 't_ change over that period of time and how can you
         | be sure that they haven't changed? The most valuable things are
         | phone numbers and email addresses. We expect those to be
         | maintained so we can re-establish contact with old friends.
        
         | bb123 wrote:
         | I've been doing the same. The potential downside risk of having
         | LinkedIn/Facebook/Instagram profiles just keeps growing and
         | growing. I'm a complete ghost on the Internet. I have Google
         | alerts set up for my names and email addresses, and I regularly
         | attempt to docs myself to find any leaks. I also can't
         | understand why anyone in the public eye doesn't completely
         | sanitise their social media profiles. The amount of people
         | brought down by 10 year old stupid tweets is insane.
        
           | ebb_earl_co wrote:
           | I was going to ask if you said "docs" as in "doxxing" [0] but
           | then a quick Wikipedia search got me to the etymology [1] of
           | "doxxing" which comes from "docs" as in "documents"! TIL
           | 
           | [0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/doxx [1]
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing#Etymology
        
         | goldenkey wrote:
         | This. The best way to erase social media is to replace the
         | account with a bunch of BS. Most of these companies are too
         | cheap and Zucker's "move fast" culture probably doesn't involve
         | database record versioning. Also because it's expensive. The
         | old SET _deleted_=1 is pretty much their main ace in the hole
         | to f*k you. Hell, even if they do versioning, just keep filling
         | the profiles with enough noise and they won't be able to filter
         | it all out unless they somehow index and data warehouse your
         | profile from the decrepit old backup. At that point, you are
         | just hoping their schema changes, the logistics, and their bad
         | practices are enough to prevent that from being cost efficient.
        
           | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
           | I saw someone on here had a program that went in your profile
           | and rewrote all posts with garbage data before you deleted
           | it. Like for Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. That way you
           | know their database is filled with junk data. I'd really like
           | to know what that was again so I could peak at it in case I
           | ever wanted to do that.
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | > To ensure they're not used as socket puppets.
         | 
         | sock puppets :)
         | 
         | Done much network programming lately?
        
           | scrollaway wrote:
           | Socket pups sounds like such a lovely alternative to
           | sockpuppets.
        
         | chrisjc wrote:
         | Same, but also adding a lot of fake data. Then again, they're
         | probably smart enough to figure out what is real.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | But if you made it a thing to daily post fake things so that
           | the activity looks normal, can you eventually convice the
           | social overlords you are someone else?
           | 
           | Relocate yourself to another city/state/country in your
           | profile. Daily make posts about things occurring in that new
           | location. Make those posts in sync with local time. Of course
           | using a VPN endpoint that correlates.
        
         | ravenstine wrote:
         | I would do this, but my data has been up in social media long
         | enough that I don't believe it makes a significant difference
         | if I superficially "delete" it now. Maybe I'm wrong?
         | 
         | At this point, I just don't add anything new. If they're going
         | to host my content ad infinitum, I might as well use their
         | storage space and bandwidth.
         | 
         | I guess it probably would be worth ditching LinkedIn. There's
         | no good reason why a [worthwhile] prospective employer would
         | require it.
        
           | nickstinemates wrote:
           | The best time was not to do it in the first place. The second
           | best time is now.
           | 
           | Your past self, current self, and your future self are
           | different people. Don't give in to sunk cost fallacy here.
        
         | slt2021 wrote:
         | this is the right approach
        
         | fnordfnordfnord wrote:
         | > I'm squatting. To ensure they're not used as socket puppets.
         | 
         | Good idea. I've noticed more of those popping up. My wife has
         | an Instagram impersonator that constantly spams some kind of
         | essential oils crap or other beauty product snake oil.
        
         | mhuffman wrote:
         | I am surprised there is not a service for this!
        
           | AugurCognito wrote:
           | Check out Redact(https://redact.dev/).
        
             | hummel wrote:
             | Thanks for the tip! Miss google on the services
        
               | ds wrote:
               | Sucks, but heres why no google support:
               | 
               | From the redact.dev FAQ page:
               | 
               | Why don't you support anything made by Google or Apple?
               | At this time, we are reliant on both Google and Apple to
               | be listed in their respective app stores. As such, we
               | have been advised that in order to remain in good
               | standing we should not offer support for these services.
        
               | pyuser583 wrote:
               | Ouch.
        
             | throwawaysea wrote:
             | How do you know you can trust this app, by the way?
        
         | throwawaysea wrote:
         | How do you scrub your Facebook profile? There aren't good tools
         | for it. Facebook itself only lets you do it one post at a time
         | in their activity log. Their constant design changes have
         | broken extensions that used to help you do it
         | (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-
         | post-m...)
        
           | ds wrote:
           | https://redact.dev
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | Now we will see an increase in SIM swapping attacks via this data
       | dump and tons of fraud happening here.
       | 
       | I hope they didn't use their phone number to login to their bank,
       | crypto exchange or other social media accounts.
       | 
       | Using phone numbers for login should be completely discouraged.
        
         | emodendroket wrote:
         | If someone merely knowing your phone number is a security risk
         | that really seems like a flaw that should be addressed with the
         | phone system and not by treating the numbers like sensitive
         | information.
        
           | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
           | There was a time when there were whole books of said numbers
           | and it wasn't a security risk. We've definitely gone wrong
           | with our assumptions somewhere.
        
           | darkfirefly wrote:
           | True, but whether or not it should be or not doesn't change
           | the fact that it is the current state of the US.
           | 
           | And it's not really just the phone number, but the
           | combination of personal info that allows for social
           | engineering - without having the existing customer confirm
           | the transfer.
        
           | rightbyte wrote:
           | I've seen worse. All you need to use a credit card is the
           | number printed on it and still we hand it to strangers to run
           | off with for 3 minutes like nothing.
        
             | eythian wrote:
             | > and still we hand it to strangers to run off with for 3
             | minutes like nothing.
             | 
             | Why would you do that?
        
               | rightbyte wrote:
               | I'm joking about the restaurant experience. Nowadays the
               | staff usually comes out with a portable machine though.
        
               | emodendroket wrote:
               | I saw that in Canada but it's rare in the US.
        
       | justusw wrote:
       | This is why it's good to only share data with LinkedIn that you
       | expect to be leaked.
        
         | bennyp101 wrote:
         | Crazy that this is the default stance now for places that
         | should know better
        
         | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
         | My LinkedIn data leaked? Honestly, it's free advertising.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | And what in that leak is going to make you stand out from the
           | other 699,999,999 users? rand(oneLuckyUser) == You???
        
             | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
             | Didn't say it was good advertising.
        
               | salt-thrower wrote:
               | "You get what you pay for"
        
           | xpe wrote:
           | To the extent the leak goes beyond public-facing profile
           | information, this is far from "advertising".
        
             | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
             | That's fair and for many it's not good at all - I was
             | speaking strictly for myself. I didn't link my account to
             | any other social media, nor did I put a phone number on
             | there.
        
         | ransom1538 wrote:
         | This is why it's good to only share data with ANY SERVICE that
         | you expect to be leaked.
        
       | takeda wrote:
       | So now we know where the security engineers from Western Digital
       | went.
        
       | impreciouschild wrote:
       | "Hacker" collates linkedin users diligent self-doxing efforts.
        
       | one2three4 wrote:
       | I'm curious. Was Linkedin always so bad at securing its (our)
       | data or things have gone downhill ever since the acquisition?
       | 
       | It is becoming a regular thing, almost part of the news cycle.
       | "In other news, yesterday was the biannual data leak from
       | Linkedin".
       | 
       | It is outrageous.
        
         | dannyw wrote:
         | I've know a few people who worked at LinkedIn prior to the
         | acquisition. They say it was worse before.
        
         | scrollaway wrote:
         | It was always that bad. In fact it probably used to be even
         | worse.
        
       | nafizh wrote:
       | I have said it many times before. Unless and until you make
       | companies pay exorbitant amount of money when your data gets
       | stolen from them, the companies will never be serious enough
       | about security. We had the whole Equifax fiasco, and nothing has
       | changed.
        
       | dada78641 wrote:
       | Well, they finally got me to log in again after, what, 5 years?
       | Good on them.
        
       | _uxgb wrote:
       | LinkedIn became crap a long time ago. Let's make
       | https://www.polywork.com the default way to share your
       | achievements.
        
         | keb_ wrote:
         | Looks terrible.
        
         | kwere wrote:
         | no real information on the landing page, only hype. I guess it
         | is for vc folks not users...
        
         | ta988 wrote:
         | Design looks like a kid tv station. I scrolled through weird
         | animations to get no info at all. I closed the page.
        
         | nomdep wrote:
         | Sorry, but looks like vaporware, and the company (Kalo) seems
         | scammy: broken website, no activity for years even when they
         | claim to have raised millions, etc.
        
         | qku wrote:
         | Can't tell what it does from the website.
         | 
         | It scrolljacks you from the beginning and shows a lot of
         | cartoon characters and trite phrases.
         | 
         | It doesn't even do anything yet but ask me to join a waitlist.
         | This is supposed to replace a social network with 700 million
         | users?! It looks horrible.
        
         | emodendroket wrote:
         | Hmmm no I think I'll stay on the one people have actually heard
         | of where you actually get scouted.
        
         | dempsey wrote:
         | Not sure if the waitlist/vip method is well suited to this.
        
         | dafman wrote:
         | I've never seen a website chug so badly on my machine, I barely
         | got 5fps on any of that page
        
       | skapadia wrote:
       | Oh lord I wouldn't be surprised if recruiting companies pay to
       | get this data.
        
       | jacquesm wrote:
       | I'm not in there. I never saw any value in a LinkedIn profile.
        
       | SavageBeast wrote:
       | I'm curious enough to ask the question - having read the article
       | and seen what data was leaked - isn't this "leaked data" the very
       | same data that Linked In is selling to users as part of its
       | Premium Offering?
        
         | spsful wrote:
         | IMO it seems to be exactly the same thing.. LinkedIn has never
         | made itself out to be respectful of privacy, so I'm really not
         | surprised.
        
       | JohnTHaller wrote:
       | Now when cold-calling scammers that buy lists from ZoomInfo say
       | they 'got my info from LinkedIn' they may not be lying.
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-29 23:02 UTC)