Since there are so many ways that as recruiters we’re not getting an appropriate bang-for-the-buck from our LinkedIn investments (and more importantly, in any way aligned to the heights of their marketing bluster), I’m going to focus this week on the many ways that we are spammed via the LinkedIn messaging systems.
So to my frenemies in Trust & Safety, this blog’s for you!
For this week, I’ll focus on the Spam. You’ve received LinkedIn InMail that is unequivocally spamful. You scrunched up your face two sentences in and thought, “WTF?” You checked to see what level connection you have with this social Charlatan.
“*(^%$$%@#%#$, first degree.” You right click on their name and Open Link in New Tab…
You furiously scan up and down the profile of this person whom you let into your “trusted network” on LinkedIn. Your brow is beginning to sweat and your eyes are shrinking into beady little pools of molten lava that are ready to erupt. As you’re ready to shout out “DOUCHEBAG”, you click on Contact, because you want to call and skewer this bastard.
Only you see this:
opayq.com?
“Opayq.com is a domain used for Masked Emails for Abine’s MaskMe and PrivacySuite products. These are real user email addresses, created by users to protect their online privacy.”
Lovely.
Now Spammers are gaining control of LinkedIn accounts, adding their masked emails to your account, and sending your contacts LinkedIn InMails like this (I masked a few things myself to protect this person’s identity); notice the punctuation and grammar:
“I give you 100% guarantee of their legitimacy, a trial will convince you” – made me smile, because I was thinking of another kind of trial.
I hope Paul Rockwell has someone on his staff at LinkedIn who will forward him this post.
Fake Profiles, Dating Requests, Marketing InMails, Account Piracy – how soon before LinkedIn ends up as a running joke on TMZ?
And this is the ultimate tool for most recruiters?
[cross-posted to RecruitingBlogs.com]
The Recruiting Inferno 
That does smack of my last encounter, and LI block. Thanks for spreading the word.
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The best part of your anti-spam posts is you just seem sadly resigned. Its sucks but you know you can’t fight it, just inform people.
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Newman, ME resigned? Folks, he knows me better. Oh, I and we can and are fighting it. Little by little.
On a day-to-day basis little seems to change. But week-to-week, month-to-month, 10Q-to-10Q? Remember my “Faking It On LinkedIn For The Week” post on RecruitingBlogs.com?
http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/faking-it-on-linkedin-for-the-week
Funny how after speaking with them and tweeting to their head of T&S, I’ve seen ZERO connection requests on LinkedIn in several days. I can assure you LinkedIn is paying attention to what Pete Radloff and I are writing.
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Fair enough. I am still idealistic enough to hope (wish) for massive changes when I see massive problems. I am so naive, LOL
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