Some LinkedIn workers worried they were about to be laid off after a mysterious internal list of about 500 employees was discovered to be accessible by anyone at the company.

Hours later, workers who had seen their name on the list had their worst fears confirmed — they were laid off, two LinkedIn workers told Insider.

A LinkedIn worker posted Sunday night on Blind, an anonymous job-posting site that verifies workers' employment using their company email, about a potential "kill list," as the worker described it, of employees that would be impacted by an upcoming layoffs.

Rumors began to swirl within the company after the worker's post, two employees told Insider.

The LinkedIn worker who posted to Blind noticed a new list, called "OctoberUpdate," had been created by the company's human resources team on LinkedIn's GroupID tool, a third-party system that allows workers to add themselves and others to teams and can be used to create group calendar events or email chains, the two employees said.

"I was getting texts from everybody, all my friends," one of the LinkedIn workers told Insider. "Everybody was calling and saying 'Hey, check GroupID.'"

The LinkedIn worker said the list included hundreds of people, including a friend who later learned on Monday that they had been included in the layoffs round. Insider was unable to independently confirm the full list of names on the list to check if all had been impacted by the layoffs.

A LinkedIn spokesperson confirmed to Insider that the company uses GroupID "to create and manage distribution lists."

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