SMALL BUSINESSES: How to Check If Your LinkedIn Password Was Stolen & What You Need To Do Now

We’re constantly talking about the benefits of using LinkedIn to drive customer leads and sales for your small business.

See?

How to Use LinkedIn to Drive Customer Leads and Sales For Your Small Business

• LinkedIn 4X Better than Twitter & 7X Better than Facebook for B2B Customer Leads [STUDY]
• How to Use LinkedIn Plugins to Make Your Small Business Website More Engaging
• 5 Reasons Why Every Small Business Owner Should Be Using LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Relaunches CardMunch, the iPhone App That Will End the Use of Business Cards
• LinkedIn Launches Follow Company Button
• LinkedIn Launches Company Status Updates

That won’t change anytime soon as LinkedIn is the #1 professional social network on the web with over 161 million small business owners and business professionals registered as members in over 200 countries.  (In case you were wondering, India is the 2nd largest market for LinkedIn after the United States.)

Unfortunately, we also live in a world where cyber terrorism is on the rise.

Today, LinkedIn announced that some LinkedIn members had their passwords compromised.

We want to provide you with an update on this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts. We are continuing to investigate this situation..

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our members. We take the security of our members very seriously. If you haven’t read it already it is worth checking out my earlier blog post today about updating your password and other account security best practices.

So, what exactly happened?

Several reports state that Russian hackers stole over 6 million encoded LinkedIn passwords and posted them online.

How can small business owners and other business professionals find out if their LinkedIn password was stolen and what steps do they need to take?

Here’s How LinkedIn Members Can Find Out If Their LinkedIn Password Was Stolen

1) Try Logging Into Your LinkedIn Profile. LinkedIn members affected by the security breach will not be allowed to login to their account.

2) Check Your Email. LinkedIn members affected by the breach will receive an email with instructions on how to change their password. NOTE: LinkedIn has specified that the email will NOT contain any links to change your password, just text instructions.

3) Check Your Email Again. At some point, LinkedIn’s Customer Support team will send a second email to affected members explaining the situation and why they need to change their passwords.

It’s unfortunate that LinkedIn suffered this cyber attack as the site truly is a powerhouse for business networking and online lead generation.

I have met some amazing people on LinkedIn, relationships which have led to countless career opportunities, business/partnership opportunities as well as introductions to other interesting contacts.

I’ll be ramping up my activity on LinkedIn even more and invite you to join me!

-To contact the writer on this story: Philip Nowak in Chicago at [email protected]

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