Dayton News
Cybercrime has taken the world of internet by storm. According to security solutions company, Symant
Cybercrime has taken the world of internet by storm. According to security solutions company, Symantec, cybercriminals are nowadays using fake LinkedIn profiles to collect contact information from the huge number of networks of business professionals. These cybercriminals make use of this information to send spear-phishing emails.
The firm mentioned on its official blog that since LinkedIn is an extremely popular social media website, with more than 400 million users globally, it has become the prime target of scammers for connecting with professionals of various industries. The cybercriminals copy all the information from the real profiles on LinkedIn and connect with new people by posing as recruiters using that fake profile.
“Over the last year, we have seen a growing number of incidents involving fake LinkedIn accounts targeting members of the business-oriented social networking service. We worked with LinkedIn to take down some fake accounts that we had come across during our research,” it said.
Symantec said that almost all the fake accounts followed a similar pattern of billing themselves as recruiters for fake firms or of referring to themselves as self-employed or of using photos of women from stock image sites or of real professionals. This was found out by using reverse image tools, the firm added.
Symantec has warned LinkedIn users to be extremely careful while adding new people to their network. LinkedIn users can use reverse-image search or copy and paste profile information into a search engine to identify whether the accounts are real or fake, the firm added.
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