A connection shared her latest LinkedIn invitation with me this morning – and I was shocked.
You see I had yet to see any real efforts at spam on the site other than those users that ask to mass connect.
Well, it appears the bubble has burst in a “big” way – let me show you the “invitation”…
I’ve got some web sites you might want to visit…
So here’s the message that came out of LinkedIn (with the identity of my contact, the spammer, and the sites changed):
From: messages-noreply@bounce.linkedin.com On Behalf Of The Spammer (LinkedIn Invitations)
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 8:59 PM
To: The Target
Subject: Join my network on LinkedIn
The Spammer has indicated you are a Friend:
Hi, Target, http://is.xx/1FF, http://www.freexxx.pro.xx, http://is.xx/1w5, http://www.freeyyy.pro.xx, These are the adult dating site, very nice :p . plz forgive me to disturb your, i lost my job, if you are registered on these sites (full free), so i can earn $0.01. again plz forgive my rudeness.
View invitation from The Spammer
DID YOU KNOW you can be the first to know when a trusted member of your network changes jobs?
With Network Updates on your LinkedIn home page, you’ll be notified as members of your network change their current position. Be the first to know and reach out!
And so this account has trolled for LinkedIn members to “offer” a web site such that the spammer can earn a whole penny for each successful setup.
And typical for spam – the spelling is bad, the sites are in a foreign country, and the target really isn’t interested in this offer…
How to respond
In case you get one of these, the response is easy enough…
Login to LinkedIn and navigate to the actual invitation. You’ll find the text “Report as Spam” in the lower right hand corner. Just select that.
And since I personally haven’t seen this invitation, I can’t really tell you what might happen after that – I’m sure it’ll be ok, but if you still see the invitation, hit the “I don’t know this user” just for good measure;-)
Seems expensive to send…
I’m not sure how the spammers can afford to take the time to create an account and troll as they do – it’s got to be fairly time consuming and the account will certainly be closed off soon enough. (or perhaps it’s taking LinkedIn by surprise so they don’t have an effective control for it – yet)
Nothing personal
And if you get the message, know that the spammer still doesn’t have your email – they are taking advantage of LinkedIn’s efforts to offer limited attempts to contact friends until an account abuses the privileges.
Your name was found at random, so just remove the item and move on.
And while this is perhaps the tip of a coming activity – it is still a very rare event.
LinkedIn for dating
But people will come up with interesting uses for the site – things that the creators never intended. Remember when I wrote last September – some people might think LinkedIn is a good tool for dating;-)
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
I had a similar LinkedIn invitation last week, but it was much better done. The picture was a young, sultry, but not conspicuously trashy female; the message was something bland like “I’d like to link”; with the message was a URL with “sex” or something else pornie in it. I did an “I don’t know this user.”
An oddity is that the large majority of people named Joy are female and therefore unlikely to be potential customers. Such stuff, if it requires work, ought to be sent to people named Steven.
You’re too kind Joy;-)
But yes – it seems odd how ill advised and time consuming this would be. The one thing that comes to mind with regular spam is that it is so inexpensive in time and effort. Dealing with LinkedIn is time-consuming…
Thanks for commenting!
steve