LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner On Password Theft: With 174M Members, ‘Health Of Our Network’ Is Strong As Ever

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner today addressed the company’s earlier incident of password theft, saying that it doesn’t seem to have an effect on growth.

The theft, as well as the flurry of negative publicity, may have caused some members to question the professional social network’s ability to keep their data safe. However, during today’s conference call on the company’s second quarter earnings, Weiner said “the health of our network” remains “as strong as it was prior to the incident.”

The company’s growth numbers seem to back that up. LinkedIn added 13 million new members in the past quarter, bringing the total to 174 million members. It’s also seeing an average of 106 million unique visitors each month.

Back in June, it was revealed that 6.5 million million account passwords had been stolen and published online. LinkedIn hashed and salted its database, and it disabled accounts of members who were at “greatest risk”.

The company said that none of the email addresses associated with the passwords had been published, and that it hadn’t detected any unauthorized attempts to access members’ accounts.

Weiner said the company is still working to improve its security. The company is taking a $2 to $3 million charge for the next quarter to further invest in this area.