LinkedIn – The New Reverse “Spam-a-Lot”

LinkedIn.com has become the latest digital spam system.  I noticed this issue a little more than 18 months ago, when I began to get numerous s solicitations from a host of odd individuals and companies.

We all know the purpose of LinkedIn is to connect people across business lines, regions, etc.  And I concur this is a great business value.  However, I’ve found a few disturbing issues as well.

-          Reverse Invitations -- Is where someone contacts you and asks you to send them a LinkedIn request.   So you ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t they invite me?”  More than likely the answer is LinkedIn has flagged them as spammers so they can no longer send invitations without knowing the email address of the invitee. 

-          Invitation Bait and Switch – where you receive an invitation from someone who claims to be a “student” or such with very low current LinkedIn.com connections.  They also seem to all have graduated from schools in EMEA. 

So I tested both situations over the past 6 months by complying with only 1 request from each of the above. 

What happened next nearly stunned me… within 72 hours’ both my email spam folder and LinkedIn profile were overwhelmed with offers, reverse invitations and the like.

Fast forward to today, the number of spam emails is still high, but the number of LinkedIn reverse invitations has decreased by ~40% my conclusion, these dubious invitations are merely a way to consolidate and sell email addresses to fast moving email spammers.

So beware of those invitations…

Scott