I’ve been reading on some supposed email that uses the look of LinkedIn invitations to get by spam/threat filters.
Have you actually seen any?!?
Not from LinkedIn
Clearly LinkedIn is not in any way shape or form connected to these messages – but that’s good to consider up front;-)
Because messages from LinkedIn are treated nicely by filters, it was an easy mashup – hey – if we take our spammy virusy email messages and make it look like they are coming from LinkedIn, they’ll get through!
Another reason to avoid strangers
The payoff of course is when an unsuspecting end user clicks on the link.
So don’t click on the link to connect to “Sinister Sneed” who says he knows you…
Send them to me!
But here’s my real request – I don’t know if this is actually happening or not.
Some organization out there is saying they’ve received these, but I have no indication that there is an actual problem.
If you get a message that appears to be a spam / solicitation / or otherwise which is made to look like a note from LinkedIn, please send me a copy. It might be fun to look into…
Safe messaging
And in the mean time, don’t go around clicking on links that look suspect, connect to people you don’t recognize, or do any of those other unsafe things;-)
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
Yes, I have had probably 6-8 of them. I just emptied my junk and trash, so I cannot post any examples, but I will probably get a few more tomorrow. I can forward one of them to Steve then.
The funny thing is that I am one of the people that will often connect with almost anyone, because a lot of my work is recruiting, and the bigger the network I have the better (and you may have seen Steve and I conversing about this on this site – and in general I agree with Steve on building connections).
However, when I held my mouse over the link, it was clearly not to linkedin.
Of course the message was already suspect because it came in on the wrong email address (or at least the first few times). I have a good number of email addresses, and actual requests to link come in via one specific address. So I was already wary.
I will also add that the safest way to check for sure is to delete the message, and log in to linkedin and see if the invitation is there.
Thanks for posting this Steve. Be safe everyone!
Peace and Health,
Eric
Eric,
Glad to hear from you and thanks for confirming this.
Readers – Eric is correct – when you hover over a link it generally shows where it will take you, and the whole point of these fake emails is to get you somewhere other than LinkedIn. (but that requires a bit of patience to check things out;-)
steve