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Nearly 6.5 Million LinkedIn Passwords Reportedly Stolen

By Mark Memmott
Published June 6, 2012 at 8:20 AM MDT

"Our team is currently looking into reports of stolen passwords," the business networking website LinkedIn confirms, after word of a Russian hacker's claim to have stolen nearly 6.5 million users' passwords.

/ LinkedIn
/
LinkedIn

The Verge, a tech-focused publication that was among the first to report the news, says "there is a possibility that this could be a hoax, but several people have said on Twitter that they found their real LinkedIn passwords as hashes on the list."

The standard advice applies: change your password.

Update at 3:48 p.m. ET. LinkedIn Confirms:

LinkedIn now confirms that "some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts."

In a statement, the company said those passwords that had been compromised have been disabled.

"These affected members will receive a second email from our Customer Support team providing a bit more context on this situation and why they are being asked to change their passwords," Vicente Silveira said in the statement.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
See stories by Mark Memmott
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