I realized my LinkedIn account was hacked yesterday when I got a notification that someone canceled the LinkedIn event I set up for the webinar I’m hosting on Thursday causing confusion for me and those who registered via LinkedIn (don’t worry the webinar is still on!).

I wanted to share what happened to me as a reminder to all of us that while I am the biggest cheerleader of LinkedIn, there’s a dark side to LinkedIn – you can be a victim of a malicious attack.

It also underscores the importance of keeping your passwords safe and reviewing your LinkedIn active user sessions periodically as I’m auto logged in from my desktop and phone for ease of use, and I’m sure many of you are too.

When this happened, I immediately reviewed my LinkedIn security settings from my desktop and saw there were several user sessions open for LinkedIn, including one in Frankfurt, Germany. That was odd because I live in New York City and I’ve never been to Frankfurt (although it’s on my list).

I immediately closed that session as well as the other ones, but not before screenshotting it along with the IP address and sending it to LinkedIn help.

So make sure to regularly review those active user sessions and log out of any strange ones. You can do that by going to the Sign In & Security tab, and clicking on “Active Sessions.” You can end any active sessions that do not look like yours. You can also screenshot the IP addresses of each active session, which is what I did when I noticed the odd ones from Frankfurt.

If this can happen to me it can happen to anyone.

Also ensure your LinkedIn password has all the bells and whistles and special characters, and change it often. Don’t use the same password on multiple web sites.

In addition, turn on two-factor authentication as an additional layer of security to protect your LinkedIn account.

Has anything like this happened to you on LinkedIn? I know this happens often on Instagram with friends of mind having their accounts taken over by crypto scams.

Also, I hope to see you on Thursday for the LinkedIn for busy professionals webinar! Register here for the webinar.

Here’s a video with more on what happened to my LinkedIn account.