The fact that scammers haunt Facebook and Twitter is not surprising. Even so, digital criminals don’t stop with just those two platforms. They’re also known to stalk users on LinkedIn where connections carry greater professional gravity.

Fortunately, users can stay alert of such activity by familiarizing themselves with the most common types of LinkedIn scams. Here are five ruses, in particular, that should be on their radar. (These ploys are not ranked but simply listed in random order.)

Scam #1: Illegitimate Contact Requests

Like on any social media platform, the act of connecting with another LinkedIn user creates ample room for malicious activity.

Indeed, one of the most common ruses on LinkedIn is when a user receives a fake connection invite email from another member. These types of requests may take on one of several different forms. In some, fraudsters may claim that they’re romantically interested in the recipient.

LinkedIn Scams 1

In others, they’ll send more generic LinkedIn invitations to distribute malware. That’s exactly what happened in a scam campaign detected by KnowBe4. In their attack emails, bad actors used spam messages targeting LinkedIn to redirect recipients to a malicious website. This location ultimately redirected a user to Google’s home page after a few seconds, but in the background, it installed a sample of the ZeuS information stealer family.

Users should always be careful when clicking on suspicious links in their emails. If they receive an e-mail invitation to connect with another LinkedIn member, they should log into their accounts and review their connection requests there.

Scam #2: Fake Job Offers

In this type of scheme, users receive a LinkedIn message from someone claiming to be a job recruiter. The spammer outlines the details of a high-paying job and tells the user that they can perform its duties from anywhere with (Read more...)