LinkedIn notifies data breach, alerts 400 mn members to stay safe

Hit by a massive data breach that put nearly 167 million users' passwords and personal information in the hands of hackers four years back, the popular career-oriented platform LinkedIn has finally came out with an explanation and steps it has taken to protect users.

In an email sent out to all its members, LinkedIn admitted that the massive data breach in 2012 may result in millions of passwords being leaked to the internet.

LinkedIn currently has 400 million users.

"On May 17, 2016, we became aware that data stolen from LinkedIn in 2012 was being made available online. This was not a new security breach or hack. We took immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of all LinkedIn accounts that we believed might be at risk," LinkedIn said.

"These were accounts created prior to the 2012 breach that had not reset their passwords since that breach," the email read.

The data breach involved member email addresses, hashed passwords, and LinkedIn member IDs (an internal identifier LinkedIn assigns to each member profile) from 2012.

"We invalidated passwords of all LinkedIn accounts created prior to the 2012 breach that had not reset their passwords since that breach," the company informed its users.