LinkedIn Password Hacking Class Action Lawsuit
If you have a LinkedIn account, there was a recent scare that affected more than 120 million users. This is the fact that the passwords of users were hacked. If you have an account at the site, there is now the LinkedIn Password Hacking Class Action Lawsuit being filed against the company. The lawsuit is called the Katie Szpyrka v. LinkedIn Corporation and the case number is CV 12-3088. The reason that the lawsuit has been filed is because the company did not protect the user’s private data which includes email addresses, passwords and login information. Katie Szpyrka is a senior associate at a real estate company in Chicago. She has been a member since 2010. She did not just have a regular free account but an upgraded one where she was paying a monthly fee. She is upset that the company did not even protect its users with the industry standard protocols and technology.
The LinkedIn Password Hacking Class Action Lawsuit is for all those who have an account before June 6, 2012. These set of people will be known as the LinkedIn User Class. There is also a subclass. The subclass consists of people who pay a monthly fee. This is the upgraded account. The company is liable because it did not encrypt the users’ info. The hackers who hacked into the servers that contained the users info posted more than 6 million of the passwords online on June 6, 2012.
The company was using an outdated hashing function for storing the users’ passwords. This was first published in 1995 by the National Security Agency. Hackers therefore were able to access the information easily by passing through the outer layer of security. Hence privacy policy was violated. Apparently just changing your password is no longer enough. This is because there are programs that can easily generate any password – even those that have a series of random numbers, letters and special characters. So if you were to change your password, it could be hacked again easily. So what needs to be done? The company definitely needs to put in some strict cyber security measures so that this does not happen again.
Cyber security experts believe that 8 character passwords are no longer enough to protect you from Hackers. The new standard is 12 characters. This is because an 8 character password has 722 trillion possibilities. A 12 character password on the other hand has about 19 sextillion possibilities. This is such a high number that at the moment, these cyber criminals are not able to hack them. So how will you ever remember 12 characters. I can’t even remember my four digit pins. 12 characters seem almost impossible to think about. Here is a good trick in creating these 12 characters that you just might remember. Just put two random words together. Or better yet, just put in a sentence. The longer the sentence the better. However do make sure that the site you are creating the password for allows for really long passwords. If not create the shorter sentence.
I have to keep changing my password at work. These are the regular eight characters that almost everyone uses. The next time I have to change my password, I may just do that. Create a sentence that is and see how far that will take me. Meaning how many characters I can add before the program will not accept any more. They usually program that in the system and it will not allow more than 8 or 12 or 20 characters. So do make sure about what you can add.
It is good that there is the LinkedIn Password Hacking Class Action Lawsuit. This is because other companies will be more careful with user data knowing that you cannot get away with not protecting your users and also that you will have to pay big time. I do not have a LinkedIn account (thank God) but most of my friends do and they are all freaking out. The reason is that many use the same password for many personal accounts. So when someone gets their password, it is basically a key to all their accounts. That is a really scary thought and it has kept me awake many a night. And even though my friends always get upset at me because I am the last if ever to adopt any kind of social networking site, I am grateful this time that I do not have an account at LinkedIn. Do keep an eye out on this case as this may just become a settlement. When it does, you may be able to get some compensation in the case.
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