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Jesse Jones III

Last Wednesday, the professional social network company, LinkedIn, revealed that 117 million passwords were sold by hackers on the black market. Four years ago, LinkedIn told users that only 6.5 million were hacked. People often use the same password for other accounts, for online banking, Facebook, and e-mail’s. LinkedIn offers advice to their users, making it so hackers will be unable to access their information. If your password is stolen, LinkedIn recommends to use a “two-factor” authentication password. This will allow a text message to be sent to the user every time their profile is accessed on different technology devices.

The hack occurred in 2012, and LinkedIn has yet to add security encryption to user passwords. Now, computer security experts wonder why it took so long for LinkedIn to figure out what happened on their own computers.

Hackers sold the passwords on the black market online, called “The Real Deal,” according to tech news site Motherboard. Now, LinkedIn is contacting all users that have their passwords stolen. This hack affects nearly one fourth of the 433 million LinkedIn users. The company let the public know that they take safety and security of their member’s seriously, and help will be provided.