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Question. Are the people you reference mostly saying they are old acquaintances? Or are they listed as recruiters? If recruiters, I can see them using phony pics if they are offshore.
I've had invites from people I don't know (I'm pretty liberal about who I let connect on LI) only for them to send me scam mails and I had to remove them.
Question. Are the people you reference mostly saying they are old acquaintances? Or are they listed as recruiters? If recruiters, I can see them using phony pics if they are offshore.
They're not listed as recruiters and they're not old acquaintances. They must be clicking that we've done business together when filling out the form requesting a connection. And they seem to know enough about local universities that makes me doubt they're off shore.
I've only caught it twice. For all I know there are more in my list that I haven't caught. Stock photos are pretty easy to catch, though, they have a more commercial look than a normal photograph, even if the photo was taken by a professional photographer.
MSChemist, I've had the same experience. They're local so I agreed to connecting with them, only to find my mailbox filled with junk, so I block their email and remove them from my list. Annoying!
Some people rack up a lot of connections and then sell the account. I don't really see the point, especially since you can build your network yourself, but I've seen LinkedIn accounts with more than 1000+ connections for sale on social media. It could just be some random adding everyone and then selling the page. Or, it could purposely be a fake account for the purpose of growing a network and then providing fake recommendations for themselves or others. Either way, they're not very smart using a stock photo! Why not just use no photo at all? I know people personally who have very high ranking positions but little to no LinkedIn info, and no photo. Could also just be a spam account for advertising, who knows. I got back on LinkedIn this year and have had tons of odd/random adds. I'll usually accept requests from anyone, but if the profile seems "off" I just decline and ignore it.
Some people rack up a lot of connections and then sell the account. I don't really see the point, especially since you can build your network yourself, but I've seen LinkedIn accounts with more than 1000+ connections for sale on social media. It could just be some random adding everyone and then selling the page. Or, it could purposely be a fake account for the purpose of growing a network and then providing fake recommendations for themselves or others. Either way, they're not very smart using a stock photo! Why not just use no photo at all? I know people personally who have very high ranking positions but little to no LinkedIn info, and no photo. Could also just be a spam account for advertising, who knows. I got back on LinkedIn this year and have had tons of odd/random adds. I'll usually accept requests from anyone, but if the profile seems "off" I just decline and ignore it.
This makes sense to me. They're probably paying some kid or someone off shore to get a large network going and then they'll go in and change the name, photo and other information on the profile. Not spam, but scam. I'm assuming they want to make it appear like they're already successful with whatever they're doing.
Speaking of scams, I just discovered that people are being paid to write reviews on Amazon. That's probably not news to some of you, but I was surprised and disappointed to hear that.
The main reason why Linkedin is the professional version of Facebook..........Fake contacts
Not even close. FB is for teens to share their social lives. linkedIn has millions of real professionals that network and get business and jobs. Many people have found jobs through linkedIn. Are there fake accounts on both? of course. But that doesn't change the core benefits of each. On LI one big reason that people make fake accounts is to show connections. It doesn't do any good to have a stellar profile with no connects, it doesnt add up. A business professional will have made many contacts and connections in their career. So in order to help someone possibly find a job, they make a fake profile and then try and connect with as many people as possible. many people do treat it like FB in the sense that they will connect (friend) with anyone. Personally, I don't add anyone to my linkedIn profile unless i know them well enough to recommend them for a position should that be required.
Speaking of scams, I just discovered that people are being paid to write reviews on Amazon. That's probably not news to some of you, but I was surprised and disappointed to hear that.
Nope, not news. For as low as $5 on fiver.com you can get people to write reviews, friend you on any social media, provide 10K twitter followers, 20K friends or 2K likes on YouTube. But it doesn't really hurt anything. You hopefully like what you like because you like it, not because other people do.
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