LinkedIn Corp’s (NYSE:LNKD) Lynda.com service is in a bit of a trouble. The company, which recently joined Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) as part of a $26.2 billion acquisition has confirmed an unauthorized third party breached a database of its account holders. The database held 55,000 account passwords of the company’s 9.5 million Lynda.com users. However, there was no evidence of leakage of passwords in the compromised data according to LinkedIn.
The company says that it has put precautionary measures in place. However, the breach comes just a few days after Yahoo! Inc’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) admission of having suffered hack of data in August 2013, which hit more than 1 billion accounts.
Now the question is, how safe is online data?
Reset of passwords for a majority of accounts
The social media site claims to have taken additional steps to make safe Lynda.com accounts. A spokesperson said:
“We are informing you of this issue out of an abundance of caution. While we have no evidence that your specific account was accessed or that any data has been made publicly available, we wanted to notify you as a precautionary measure.”
The company also says that it is working to notify approximately 9.5 million Lynda.com users who may be affected. Lynda.com has already invalidated the passwords of the affected users. They will be prompted to reset their password when they log in. However, even without being affected, it is advisable to update passwords just to be on the safe side. Meanwhile, neither LinkedIn nor Microsoft have issued official statements on the issue.
Business as usual
Every business requires a range of updated skills. The use of the Lynda.com service, which is a subscription-based online learning portal, gives members an opportunity to focus on the available technology skills. LinkedIn’s availability of LinkedIn Learning came about in September and combines Microsoft’s resources with Lynda.com’s content. LinkedIn also has a host of specialized and networking data.
The service was acquired in April last year at an approximate value of $1.5 billion, comprising both cash and stock. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s stock was trading at $62.30, a fall of $0.28 or 0.45%.