Scammers

Scammers on LinkedIn?

Is LinkedIn the new scammers’ hub?

People that have been active on social media would have definitely come across scammers at least once. No matter where you go (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, Telegram, or any other popular social media or marketplace), there’ll always be someone trying to rip someone else off.

The most common scam topics that I’ve come across are investment, bitcoin mining, Lottery, and dating scams. I always try my best to keep the conversation going with the scammer so the scammer would be occupied with me. I’ve never really thought about sharing my experience in the past but I was approached by a scammer on LinkedIn a while back and since I value LinkedIn over any other social media on the internet, I’ve decided to talk about it.

1.0 Adding me on LinkedIn

I usually accept anyone that requests me and I try my best to remove inactive connections once in 3 months. I got a request from someone called Amelia Harper and the profile didn’t seem interesting nor eye-catching in any way but I still accepted the request.

**I still don’t know if the scammer is a woman but since the profile represents a woman, I’ll refer to the scammer as ‘she’.

1.1 Usual Greeting

Things started sounding fishy when she wanted to contact me personally via WhatsApp or hangouts. This was not the first time I am hearing this and I asked her for the reason.

1.2 Tracking her IP

Recently I had written a post on “Are LinkedIn Skill Tests Legit?” (If you haven’t read it, it’s featured on top of my profile) and I thought of asking for her opinion. It doesn’t just end there, I used a service to shorten this URL and attached a tracking ID with it to find her IP address. Guess what, she fell for the trap!!!

1.3 IP Test results

Before I had sent it, I did a test run to see if it works.

The scammer had immediately clicked on the bait not realizing the consequence. First, a click was registered from Dallas and then another one from Atlanta. The one in Dallas was also found to be a “bot”.

Spam test 1

Spam test 2

I did not want to blindly believe my test results so I did another test. The results showed that the IP address of Amelia was blacklisted under BARRACUDA, CBL, and Spamhaus ZEN.

• BARRACUDA — Blacklisted for sending spam email
• CBL — Botnets that facilitate spam, virus downloads, and other attacks.
• Spamhaus ZEN — Database of IP addresses from which Spamhaus does not recommend the acceptance of electronic mail.

Interesting she had replied me after that and for the whole chat history, you can contact me privately.

2.0 How can you avoid these scams?

In Australia alone, $12712415 was scammed in June 2020 alone. It is very easy to spot a scammer online and I’d like to share a few of the methods that I use.

• Getting requests from someone totally unrelated to your demographics and skills.
• Usually, they start off normally but as you keep talking to them, they’ll make several grammar mistakes.
• Check their profile picture. Usually, scammers take pictures of good looking people online and try to impersonate them. Try to do a google image search to see if that image is online and do some background check.
• They always try to get you to Whatsapp or Telegram.
• They try to slowly start pushing in a product/service
• They avoid voice/video calls.

3.0 How can LinkedIn avoid scammers in the network?

I wouldn’t have written this article if not for LinkedIn. I really value LinkedIn’s positive impact on society and believe that as members of the network, it’s our responsibility to maintain the standard of the network. Though not many, the number of scammers in LinkedIn is gradually increasing and several scams related to jobs, tech support, universities, scholarships have taken place and we should be concerned about it.

LinkedIn has been working hard in avoiding these issues and as members of the network, you should always report an account if you are approached by a scammer.

I believe that LinkedIn uses several algorithms to address these issues and more priority can be given to

• Warning and Blocking users visiting LinkedIn from blacklisted IP addresses.
• Sentiment analysis to identify scammers through their chat history, comments, etc.
• Identifying if two users have the same profile picture and taking the necessary steps to verify the users.

I’m not an expert in spam detection but I do believe that improving these security measures would definitely help LinkedIn maintain the standard. Looking forward to hearing responses from the community.

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