Beware of LinkedIn Phishing Emails

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Aug 15, 2010 in Internet Mastery | 3 comments

You are very likely getting a lot of “Join my network on LinkedIn” whether you are a LinkedIn member or not. With a little due diligence you can determine whether this is a true message from LinkedIn or a phishing email designed to separate you from your account credentials and thereby hijack your account.

It used to be fairly easy (and often entertaining!) to spot SPAM or Phishing attempts. In many cases English was clearly not the criminals’ first language. The sentence structures were terrible and there were spelling errors throughout the e-mail. Unfortunately, that’s not the case any more. The e-mails are written well enough to pass as legitimate correspondence from reputable companies such as LinkedIn. In the case of the email below, it is formatted exactly like a legitimate message but the URL is formatted to go to imperialcraftsman.com/x.html

Despite improving their spelling and grammar, there are still dead giveaways if you pay attention. Here are some things to look for to help spot a fraudulent e-mail. By hovering your mouse over any links in the email you will be able to determine which is authentic and what is not. Notice that all hyperlinks lead to a page that is clearly not on the LinkedIn domain.

I encourage you to get in the habit of deleteing messages from MySpace, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Paypal or other sites that you may be active on and just make it a point to login from the URL of the site in question when you need to check on your account activity, approve friend requests or respond to invitations.

If you think you have clicked on any of these emails be sure to go in and change your password immediately. In fact, this would be a good time to update your passwords on all of your networking sites just to be safe.