LinkedIn leak is beyond scary
- Thread starter psa
- Start date
Found this on a forum about the leak, sums it up instead of watching a video.
A lead-generation company can be particularly problematic in a situation like this for several reasons:
The very nature of lead-generation data—structured, professional, and voluminous—makes it a prime target for cybercriminals.
- 16 TB leak exposed 4.3 B professional records.
- Included names, emails, jobs, social links, and photos.
- Major risk: AI-driven phishing and scams.
- Unknown if anyone accessed it before closure.
- Likely from a lead-generation company.
- Key collections: profiles, unique_profiles, and people.
- Could enable large-scale identity theft and corporate reconnaissance.
A lead-generation company can be particularly problematic in a situation like this for several reasons:
- They Collect Massive Personal Data:
- Their business depends on gathering emails, phone numbers, job roles, company info, and other personal details. That’s exactly the kind of data attackers want.
- Data Often Includes Sensitive Professional Info:
- Unlike general consumer data, lead-gen datasets often include LinkedIn profiles, work history, and corporate hierarchy, which can be used for targeted corporate attacks.
- Centralized and Structured:
- Lead-gen companies organize data in large, easily searchable databases. If unsecured, it’s “ready-to-use” for automated scams or AI-driven attacks without much preprocessing.
- Potential Legitimacy Misconception:
- People often think emails from lead-gen sources are safe or business-related, making phishing more convincing.
- Scale Makes It Dangerous:
- They can have hundreds of millions of records in one place. That’s billions of opportunities for attackers to automate highly personalized attacks.
The very nature of lead-generation data—structured, professional, and voluminous—makes it a prime target for cybercriminals.
I swear there's a new data leak on important websites every other week nowadays, do these companies have no interest in privacy at all. They'll do anything to cut corners that leads to mass leaking
Getting a lot worse, in fact it did the other night.
In a nutshell, this AI, Project Glasswing by Anthropic (they created Claude AI) that was just released found vulnerabilities in previous software, OSs, browsers, etc, etc, stuff that nobody has known about for decades and it did it within a day?
So yeah, it's can get really messed up and scary for all of us if you consider what it will be capable of doing it one year, 6 months, or even 1 more month.
“Mythos Preview has already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser.
Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely.
The fallout—for economies, public safety, and national security—could be severe. Project Glasswing is an urgent attempt to put these capabilities to work for defensive purposes.”
The next generation of frontier models are going to melt our collective brains, and this is just the beginning of the exponential curve.
All social media is bad and shouldn't be used at all but LinkedIn in particular is the worst of the lot. It's a social engineers wet dream. Can't tell you how many times I leveraged LinkedIn in order to worm my way into a multibillion dollar company and steal hundreds of millions (sometimes billions) of dollars worth of intellectual property when I was red teaming in my past life. I always argued that having a LinkedIn account should be grounds for immediate summary termination but people always said that's too extreme 
If not termination then, suspension for two weeks and come back with a 2,000 word essay handwritten; in line paper; explaining why we should take you back.All social media is bad and shouldn't be used at all but LinkedIn in particular is the worst of the lot. It's a social engineers wet dream. Can't tell you how many times I leveraged LinkedIn in order to worm my way into a multibillion dollar company and steal hundreds of millions (sometimes billions) of dollars worth of intellectual property when I was red teaming in my past life. I always argued that having a LinkedIn account should be grounds for immediate summary termination but people always said that's too extreme
You need to rewrite a paragraph again ( for comparison reasons ) at work for HR to see if it is your hand writing not AI or another person you may have paid.
And it better be hand written, I swear with everything being typed up now people have forgotten how to actually write anything 
@psa 's video link in post #1 mentions Linked In working with Microsoft to snoop for installed software apps.
I can confirm that one of the tasks performed during Microsoft Updates is to search the C:\ drive to look for specific installed software which is not registered, and anything on the list is disabled.
This isn't 'tin foil hat' conspiracy theory beliefs. In Windows XP, the update.log file could be opened and read with notepad, and most of it was in plain English. There was a list of specific software which the update searched for, so most likely certain copyright holders pay a fee to Microsoft to do this on their behalf.
I make computer fonts as a hobby, and I have a collection of more than 250,000 fonts. Many of them are commercial fonts which should only be available by purchase, but I didn't buy any of them. I don't think any of them are installed, and none are saved on the C:\ drive. I have them only because I hoard stuff, and sometimes I look at them with a font editor to study the vector construction.
I make fonts with a font editor named ScanFont3. It was created around 1995, it's no longer sold, and it won't work with any Windows operating system more recent than XP. The cracked version I have also won't work after a Windows Update from January, 2014.
I got around that problem by having my geek install Windows XP on a few laptops where he first formatted the hard drives then installed XP and service packs 1, 2 and 3 only. Those computers have never been connected to the Internet since the operating systems were installed - I move data with a USB drive. People using the latest and most expensive font editing software cannot reproduce some of my results.
I can confirm that one of the tasks performed during Microsoft Updates is to search the C:\ drive to look for specific installed software which is not registered, and anything on the list is disabled.
This isn't 'tin foil hat' conspiracy theory beliefs. In Windows XP, the update.log file could be opened and read with notepad, and most of it was in plain English. There was a list of specific software which the update searched for, so most likely certain copyright holders pay a fee to Microsoft to do this on their behalf.
I make computer fonts as a hobby, and I have a collection of more than 250,000 fonts. Many of them are commercial fonts which should only be available by purchase, but I didn't buy any of them. I don't think any of them are installed, and none are saved on the C:\ drive. I have them only because I hoard stuff, and sometimes I look at them with a font editor to study the vector construction.
I make fonts with a font editor named ScanFont3. It was created around 1995, it's no longer sold, and it won't work with any Windows operating system more recent than XP. The cracked version I have also won't work after a Windows Update from January, 2014.
I got around that problem by having my geek install Windows XP on a few laptops where he first formatted the hard drives then installed XP and service packs 1, 2 and 3 only. Those computers have never been connected to the Internet since the operating systems were installed - I move data with a USB drive. People using the latest and most expensive font editing software cannot reproduce some of my results.
