LinkedIn’s Education Service Lynda.com Latest Data Breach Victim

Less than a week after Yahoo confirmed a second data breach affecting nearly one billion users, another online social network has been targeted by hackers: LinkedIn says that its online education service — Lynda.com — is the latest hack attack victim, albeit with a much lower number of affected victims. 

ZDNet reports that LinkedIn — which is now owned by Microsoft — began notifying Lynda.com’s 9.5 million users that a third party had recently accesses a database containing customer information.

For now, LinkedIn says that it has reset passwords of about 55,000 Lynda.com users as a precautionary measure, as there was no evidence that the breach included the leak of passwords.

Lynda.com, acquired by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion in April 2015, offers subscription-based courses – ranging from $250 to $375 per year – in business, teaching and creative skills in several languages for individuals, as well as corporations, government entities, and education organizations.

A spokesperson for LinkedIn tells ZDNet that there hasn’t been any evidence that the information exposed — including account holder contact details, courses taken, and learning day — had been posted publicly.

“We are informing you of this issue out of an abundance of caution,” Lynda.com said in a notice to users. “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.”