These are similar to the Linkedin scam I wrote about a year ago. At a casual glance they look like real LinkedIn invitations, but a moment of scrutiny shows they aren’t real. Genuine LinkedIn invitations include a photo, the sender’s company, a link to view their profile, and the number of shared connections. Also, the accept button on a real LinkedIn message just says “Accept.” These say “Accept Raymond Wilson (or whomever — no apostrophe) Invitation”. Finally, the text of the messages look like a forwarded email:
On August 5, Samuel Padilla wrote:
> To: robert@rlweiner.com
>
> I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
>
> Samuel Padilla
The senders were all LinkedIn Invitations (invitations@linkedin.com)
The subjects have included:
Your friend sent you an invitation to join LinkedIn group.
Notification of LinkedIn invitation.
LinkedIn inviation notificaltion. (including 2 typos)
Join LinkedIn group of your friend.
The “friends” have been:
Samuel Padilla
Ezra Sexton
Lewis Padilla
Zane Dawson
Finn Prince
Kevin Spears
Jerome Sandoval
Nathaniel Knox
Raymond Wilson
The “accept” links lead to site that I assume intend to do me harm, like: http://bjgddl.com/gagelink.html
http://royal-party.com/gagelink.html
I just got one from “Raymond Wilson”
the Accept Invitation link went to
facesofnewzealand.com in Seattle WA.
I got a SPAM message to an email alias only used/known to linkedin. I suspect they got the email address from recent hacking (but as my email accounts and passwords are unque to each site, they coudln’t do much with it)
I got a message like that today, the sender was Mauro Gallegos LinkedIn . I should have been more suspicous, as I didn’t know the name and didn’t want to accept, but I did click on the ‘go to my inbox’ link that appeared in the message as well. It took me to a page on finopus.com, don’t know (yet) if it contained any malware – I closed it right away.
Jeltje — I’d run a malware scan right away, just in case.