How To Check If Your LinkedIn Account Was Hacked

You will have seen blanket media coverage yesterday of LinkedIn getting hacked and losing six million passwords. Rumors are starting to spread around about the passwords already being used by hackers in phishing attacks, targeting people for their financial details by installing malware on their computers.

Luckily, a security company called Lastpass have released a handy tool that checks if your password was one of those that was hacked. The company insits that the tool is totally safe as they take the SHA-1 hash password and send it to a database of the 6.5 million passwords (which is public for all to easily decrypt anyway) and queries if yours is one of the unlucky ones. Although the service is totally secure, we would suggest that no matter what happens today, you start by changing your password not just on LinkedIn, but all your social networks.

Hacked

So if your account was one of those hacked, the first step you should take is to change your password immediately, although that might be too little, too late. Also, you should have a look through your account and remove any sensitive information you might have on it, especially if it’s the likes of private messages.

Not Hacked

Even if your account shows up as one that didn’t get hacked, it’s still a good idea to change the password (as it is with all services every once in a while) and have a quick scan through to see if there’s anything there that you’re not comfortable with sharing. Don’t just think that it’s just LinkedIn because this happens to all web services on a regular basis so if anything, it should act as a wake up call about what we share online.