A slew of fake LinkedIn connection requests.
For somebody who normally receives a LinkedIn connection request about once a week, yesterday I suddenly received 6! Wow, am I popular or what???
Firstly none of them had a connection in common with any of my contacts. This always makes me question why are they trying to connect with me.
I then Googled the names and companies.
The first was “Adline matter”, apparently a doctor from the photo. Google reckoned I wanted Adelaide Matter. Ignore & Report as Spam!
The next was “James Freeman, of Sailer Benefit”. Google reckoned this was a Texan who had been executed for murder earlier this year. Deeper searching on the Sailer Benefit side showed no connection with a James Freeman. Ignore & Report as Spam!
The third was a “William Parker, of Barclays”. Lots of hits here, all indicating it was a scammer. Ignore & Report as Spam!
The next one was a real person! It was “Ayesha Gadaffi, of AYG Group”, the daughter of a certain Libyan Dictator. When the company name was included in the Google search, this highlighted it as a scam account. Ignore & Report as Spam!
The fifth was again a real person. Goes by the name “Asare Akuffo, of Bank Atlantec”. It shows that he is a banker, but there was no association with Bank Atlantec. Ignore & Report as Spam!
Finally, “Hesham Abdulla Al Qassim, Vice Chariman of the Board” is also a real person, but his Real LinkedIn (which was the first search result) shows him as CEO. Ignore & Report as Spam!
So folks, you should be wary of any connection request for people you do not know. It’s the same rule we should apply to receiving e-mails from strangers. Don’t accept connection requests from strangers, even if they have a common connection. If you are tempted, just spend a few extra seconds and Google them and their company or position and see what shows up.
Lets be careful out there.