How to hack a former employee's LinkedIn account

This is a surprisingly easy way that employers can hack into a former employee's LinkedIn account. They can change anything they want, including password and the former employee wouldn't know until it is to late. This was a discovery I made today when...

I received a phone call from one of my former colleagues. She was having trouble changing information on the company's LinkedIn page. Seeing as how I used to be one of the admins, she tried to login with my company e-mail. At one point  I had added my company e-mail as a contact. I no longer use that e-mail and thought the account was deactivated. However, like with most companies, the mail account can be remade or retrieved.

Now it is important to note that I originally registered with a different e-mail to linkedIn and had a different primary e-mail address than my company e-mail. What I did not know, was that if you have an e-mail address associated to your profile account, you can login using that e-mail as a username.

So she had my username. Then the password was all that was needed. For this a simple password recovery sent to the company e-mail was all that was needed to reset the password and voila, she was in my account. But unfortunately I was no longer admin of the page, so she had to start all over. She was nice enough to call me and tell me what my password had been reset too. To be honest I was really amazed that she was able to do this so easily as she is not someone who I would call technical.

So how to you keep your old employer from taking your account? Make sure to remove any past e-mails from your account. This took a little searching to try and find where it was.

How to keep linkedin safe from former colleagues

1. Hover on your name in the top right corner, and select settings from the drop-down menu.

2. Under your profile picture click on Primary E-mail address CHANGE/ADD

3. Now remove any former e-mail addresses. Try to keep it to just 2 e-mails max.

That's it, your a bit safer now. I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did please share it with friends or colleagues who would find it useful.

NonSociety: Meghan talks about Mobuzz

Meet Meghan Asha, one of the coolest, geekiest and most beautiful bloggers on the internet. A dream girl for any geek like me. Today she talks about Mobuzz.tv on her blog and how she really liked it. My week is made... Hell, my month is made now.

"Their video post today about backing up your data and photos is particularly informative (maybe, I’ll take their info to heart before loosing my next external drive). I’m upset that I can’t visit this company before leaving tomorrow. Perhaps, I’ll need to add this to my ever expanding list of reasons to come back to Spain (sigh!)."

Damn! Have a good flight Meghan. Well, it's probably a good thing that Meghan didn't come by the office as I would have to give her a ring immediately and ask her to marry me. And we all know how that has gone in the past. Still, I'll have a little bit more of a smile on my face doing the shows, knowing she will might be watching. Thanks for the post Meghan!

Just had an idea for the collest podcast ever. Meghan and Jag together. ;-)

picture from NonSociety: Meghan

Tags: nonsociety, gabemac, mobuzz, meghan, hitthejagspot, tech, bloggers, superstar