>> LinkedIn leaked 8 million users' passwords less than a year ago, because they were storing them in the database in plain text.

The password leak from last year was really a leak of the password hashes. I'm pretty sure they didn't store passwords in plaintext.

I think the backlash was because they didn't salt the hashes and only used one iteration of SHA1 instead of a more appropriate hash function.

That being said, this doesn't really change the OP's point. Which was, "secure my ass"