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More than 100 million LinkedIn users might be more vulnerable Wednesday, after their email and passwords have been uploaded online and reportedly for sale.

LinkedIn issued a statement saying it is aware of the situation, but added that this is not a new data breach as the information was taken during a hack in 2012.

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“Yesterday, we became aware of an additional set of data that had just been released,” LinkedIn said in its statement. “We are taking immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of the accounts impacted, and we will contact those members to reset their passwords.”

To make matters worse, technology news website Motherboard is reporting that the hacker who originally took the information is now trying to sell the data online for around US$2,200. The website reports the hacker, who goes by the name “Peace,” claims there are 167 million LinkedIn accounts in the database, but only 117 million have both emails and passwords.

LinkedIn is encouraging users to visit their safety center to learn how to enable two-step verification, as well as change their password to something stronger than they might typically use.

“For several years, we have hashed and salted every password in our database, and we have offered protection tools such as email challenges and dual factor authentication,” the company said.

jomcconnell@postmedia.com

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