Data Scraping on Linkedin – What’s the current report?
Here’s what you should know about how hackers scraped data from Linkedin two months back and how Linkedin provided restrict data-scraping to its users.
What is Data Scraping?
In simple words and according to Wikipedia.com, “data scraping is a technique where a computer program extracts data from human-readable output coming from another program. This is done mostly for marketing in almost all industries where digital marketing is required. On Linkedin, data scraping is a tool to cater to both B2B and B2C audiences, but sometimes, unfortunately, this goes out of the legal boundaries.
Data Scraping on LinkedIn
Cyber News reported back in April that about 500 million users’ data was scraped out of the application from a dataset of public information. Surprisingly after the data scraping, it has been posted online for sale. This news was alarming to the online world as this data scraping could seriously affect the user base of two-thirds of the users on the platform.
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Everything important was included in the data, such as personal phone numbers, IDs, workplace addresses, and other important links. However, more sensitive information was not included in the database, such as credit card credentials and bank details. This came into acknowledgment when the data was posted online by the hackers. Another twist in the plot came when the criminals started to reinvest in the profit by bigger attacks as the hacker companies begin to pay ransomware gangs.
It is reported that such attacks are likely to exist in current times due to increased remote work and usage of personal devices. This attack not only infuriated the users but also made them concerned about their privacy. However, last month, Linkedin granted the opportunity to restrict data scarping to its users so that the privacy and safety of the user base are maintained.
Actions against data scraping and data security?
One thing that could have a huge impact on data security in social apps is that the US Supreme Court has dismissed a court ruling that restricted LinkedIn previously from denying recruitment software company hiQ access to information that LinkedIn members had made publicly available in its app.
Such steps embark a significant impact on Linkedin’s reputation and how they deal with users’ privacy by keeping their information safe from non-users and the general public. After Linkedin data scraping, every other platform became aware of hackers and started data restrictions to non-users as effective measures in protecting their privacy.
With contact awareness against data scraping on Linkedin from legal digital forums and the government, this act can be reduced, and users’ personal information can be secured from getting compromised.
