It happens with every social network, people wanting to subvert the system and exploit our gullibility for their own gain. Then again, on a social network like LinkedIn, maybe we’re all busy trying to gain from our connections and network anyway and these folk are just a bit more overt about their usage? Maybe some. But then there are others…
I had this situation arise this morning on my own LinkedIn account and it’s clear they put in enough time to have an alma mater, a profile photo, etc, so on first glance it’d be a match. But a closer look reveals it’s just a bogus loan network. Let me show you what I mean.
First off, here’s the link request:
“Nvidia” as a first name? A bit suspicious as that’s the name of a company that makes sound chips for computers (yours might well have an Nvidia chip in it right now!). But a legit title, a profile pic that looks reasonably professional…
To learn more, I’ll click on “Nvidia”‘s name to get to her profile page:
Still not a complete bust, though a really close look at the custom LinkedIn URL reveals that it’s not legitimate: “linkedin.com/in/loansnocheckingaccount”. Nvidia, why not your name? 🙂
Scrolling down a bit further and the background “summary” is way more revealing:
Definitely not a person (business?) that I want to link to on LinkedIn.
To reject them, I’ll just go back to the requested links menu and move the cursor over the entry to pop up the two action buttons:
LinkedIn is being politically correct, I guess, with the “reject this moron” button being labeled as “Archive Invite”, but that’s what I click on anyway…
There we go. I don’t want to just mark them as someone I don’t know (which stops them requesting links down the road) but want to report the profile page as spam. A click on Report as Spam and…
Done. Mission accomplished. Sorry “Nvidia”.
Just to show that I’m not completely grumpy, if you are legit, not a robot, not a scammer or spammer, you can find me on LinkedIn and request a connection. Start here: Dave Taylor on LinkedIn.
