Data breach
LinkedIn data breach
In 2016, LinkedIn suffered a data breach affecting 77,662,738 records. Exposed data included usernames and passwords.
Breach date
77.7 million
Records in the breach
2
Types of data exposed
Were you affected by the LinkedIn breach?
Enter your email address to see whether it appears in this breach — or any of the other breaches in Leak Database.
Data exposed in the LinkedIn breach
- Usernames
- Passwords
About the breach
LinkedIn has experienced major data exposures and security incidents over the years, though the company often clarifies that many large-scale collections stem from public data scraping rather than direct system hacks.
Major Incidents & Timeline
• 2012 / 2016 System Breach: Attackers breached LinkedIn's internal databases, exposing approximately 6.5 million un-salted/weakly hashed passwords initially, with a larger cache of over 100 million credential pairs surfacing on the dark web by 2016.
• 2021 Profile Scraping: A massive dataset containing public profile details (such as names, job titles, email addresses, and phone numbers) from roughly 500 million to 700 million users was scraped and offered for sale on hacking forums. LinkedIn maintained that no private system breach occurred.
• Recent Scraping & Data Aggregation (2025–2026): Large-scale collection events—including reports of massive user record compilations gathered by third-party lead-generation or scraping tools—have continued to circulate, heightening risks for targeted phishing and spam.
Major Incidents & Timeline
• 2012 / 2016 System Breach: Attackers breached LinkedIn's internal databases, exposing approximately 6.5 million un-salted/weakly hashed passwords initially, with a larger cache of over 100 million credential pairs surfacing on the dark web by 2016.
• 2021 Profile Scraping: A massive dataset containing public profile details (such as names, job titles, email addresses, and phone numbers) from roughly 500 million to 700 million users was scraped and offered for sale on hacking forums. LinkedIn maintained that no private system breach occurred.
• Recent Scraping & Data Aggregation (2025–2026): Large-scale collection events—including reports of massive user record compilations gathered by third-party lead-generation or scraping tools—have continued to circulate, heightening risks for targeted phishing and spam.
How to protect yourself
In order to protect yourself, we recommend the following:
1. Immediately change your password on the affected system, but also change it on any other service where you may have re-used the password.
2. Install Google or Microsoft Authenticator on your mobile device and activate 2FA on any website you use, which allows it.
3. Be aware of an increase in spam or scam e-mails.
1. Immediately change your password on the affected system, but also change it on any other service where you may have re-used the password.
2. Install Google or Microsoft Authenticator on your mobile device and activate 2FA on any website you use, which allows it.
3. Be aware of an increase in spam or scam e-mails.
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