Note: if you are Tracy Wilson and have joined a company in Botswana then please contact me and I will retract this post. I hope you will appreciate that healthy scepticism is part of life on the internet.
A few weeks ago I had a LinkedIn contact request from “Tracy Wilson,” her profile was claiming that she has recently moved to Botswana “due to an exciting career move.”
“Fair enough,” I thought, it’s possible that she is joining a company involved in mining, diamond trading, banking or some other high profile industry.
So I accepted the request, and within a very short space of time I had a message:
Thank you for accepting me into your professional network.
I am just about to move to Botswana, waiting on my start date.
I have never been before and wondered whether I could take your number for when I get there?
I gave a polite reply enquiring which company she was joining, and where she was going to be based in order to give her better advice. That was on 1 May, to date I have had no reply.
Looking more closely at the profile and engaging critical thinking raises a few more sceptical flags:
- Large number of contacts but very few endorsements for skills: 500 contacts and 39 endorsements compared to my 65 contacts and 51 endorsements. To me that says that few of her contacts actually know her.
- Very light employment history: she looks to be about my age so she would have graduated late nineties to early noughties. A long term position as PA to the Managing Director of Lloyds TSB (started as a graduate and then stayed there for 8 years?) followed by a stint as Business Development manager linking to a dormant subpage linked to a genuine communications company.
- Relevant interests: no visible groups and following six companies from diverse sectors (PR, real estate, telecoms, marketing, training/coaching and pharmaceuticals) compared to my more focussed industry interests.
My conclusion is that considering Tracy was PA to a Managing Director of an internationally recognised banking group and then worked in PR I would have expected the profile to be much stronger. There isn’t much commentary on the internet about fake LinkedIn profiles, here are some fairly comprehensive commentaries on the subject:
- Linked Strategies – identifies a few red flags and tells you how to report (ironically offering courses on building powerful LinkedIn profiles – I rank this kind of thing alongside SEO and social media mavens…).
- Undercover Recruiter – some suggestions about why people create fake profiles and other social engineering schemes.
- Plugged in Recruiter – much the same as Undercover Recruiter but a bit longer with some screenshots a lot like mine!
Just like other social media platforms, when somebody friends, follows or requests to become a connection then you should ask:
- Is this a real person?
- Why do they need to connect with me?
- What do I gain from engaging with this person?
On first impression I felt it would possibly be beneficial, but that first message asking for a phone number was the first red flag and the reason I went digging deeper.
Just like friending on Facebook, connecting with somebody on LinkedIn gives them access to certain personal information. When the first thing a person does is ask for a phone number or email address (and then doesn’t reply to your reply). Handing out personal information puts you at risk of being exploited or inconvenienced (spammed, scammed, cold-called, identity theft, etc.) so take your time, evaluate the request and be sceptical.
Stay safe online, people.
RT @chiwulo: I just wrote something: LinkedIn: Fake Profiles and Phishing – http://t.co/oz3Yd3ZiSf