Back in 2015, LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com for $1.5 billion. The company recently joined Microsoft as part of a $26.2 billion acquisition. Now, it seems like LinkedIn’s Lynda.com service is in a bit of a trouble. The company today started notifying users about a data breach database which affected “less than 55,000” Lynda.com users. According to the company, an unauthorized third-party accessed a database which included user data for Lynda.com. Along with the 55 thousand users, Lynda.com is also notifying 9.5 million users who had “learner data, but no password information” in the breached database. In a statement, the company said:
We recently became aware that an unauthorized third party ?accessed a database that included Lynda.com ?user data. As a precautionary measure, we reset passwords for the less than 55,000 Lynda.com users affected and are notifying them of the issue. We’re also working to notify approximately 9.5 million Lynda.com users who had learner data, but no password information, in the database. We have no evidence that any of this data has been made publicly available and we have taken additional steps to secure Lynda.com accounts.
And -’s the email which some users started receiving today:
We recently became aware that an unauthorized third party breached a database that included some of your Lynda.com learning data, such as contact information and courses viewed. We are informing you of this issue out of an abundance of caution.
Please know that we have no evidence that this data included your password. And 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.
If you have questions, we encourage you to contact us through our Support Center.
The Lynda .com team
Lynda.com is urging users to update their password as soon as possible — if you are a Lynda.com users and you’re affected by the data breach, you really should update your password right now. Even if you’re not affected, it’d be good to update the password anyway just to be on the safe side.
