I was just informed that LinkedIn, where “Connect to Opportunity” also applies to criminals, was “scraped” back in April of this year. This is different than a hack. LinkedIn wasn’t hacked. What happens when you “scrape” a site is you are taking all the public information that is available (pretty much to anyone on the site).

So some bad guys scraped LinkedIn and got the following information: Education levels, Email addresses, Genders, Geographic locations, Job titles, Names, Social media profiles. Information that its users made public (by coincidence I closed my LinkedIn account just a month ago).

Bad guys may try to send email to people, adding personal information to make it seem legit or even masquerading as a LinkedIn message, so just be aware if you have a LinkedIn account and get an email claiming to be from them, it may NOT be.

The safest way to be sure when you get an email from ANY company, bank, etc. is to simply go to their site directly in your browser and log in there—DON’T click the link in the email. If it’s legit it won’t matter, but if it’s NOT legit, clicking the link could bring all kinds of trouble to you.

Stay safe folks!