It’s no good creating a secure password if the website you’ve signed up for doesn’t bother protecting your information. Sadly, it seems as though a lot of people have been learning this the hard way, of late. The number of password leaks that have surfaced just over the past two months has been positively staggering, and the revelation that many website (LinkedIn included) have been utilizing password protection that could be called shoddy, at best is…distressing, to say the least.

But hey…they’re getting punished for compromising the data of millions of users, right? They’re going to pay for the fact that they didn’t bother to adequately secure the personal information of their loyal customers, right? Aren’t they? Um…not so much. Let’s have a look at the scandal involving LinkedIn, which caused the personal information of thousands upon thousands of users to fall straight into the wrong hands.

There’s a $5 million class action lawsuit being brought against them by the injured users, and maybe there’ll be an inquiry into their password security. Now, here’s the kicker: at the time of their IPO, they were valued at $3.3 billion. That five million dollar lawsuit doesn’t seem so pressing anymore, does it?

Yeah, sure, maybe they’ll be motivated to bring about change now, but the damage has already been done. And the worst part is, they’re not the only ones who aren’t taking security measures seriously. Believe it or not, over 70% of organizations are very seriously failing when it comes to protecting their users. These aren’t little podunk organizations we’re talking about, either. Formspring, Yahoo, and even the Official Android Forums, Riot games and Las.FM have all been hit of late. They’re getting hit one after another, and no one seems to be doing anything about it.

Could it really be that all these organizations are using shoddy security measures? Or are hackers just getting that smart? Either way, one thing is clear: this is a very real problem, and it’s not going to go away any time soon. Long story short, be very, very careful about what you share online: it’s become clear that many organizations aren’t interested in protecting their users, meaning that users are going to have to protect themselves.

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