I think that everybody has joined LinkedIn for the same reason, because LinkedIn promotes themselves in the career and business network. Where is business, there you can earn money. Where you can earn money there you’ll find criminals too. Money attracts the scammers like moths to a flame.
Networking means coming closer and make something together. In the case of LinkedIn should it be managing careers and/or making business together. In the human nature is it programmed, that everyone is first thinking about their own interests and not about others. This greediness makes it difficult bringing people together. LinkedIn is not able to check each subscriber. The most of them are only entering as less data as possible by signing up. Once they have their account they will change their data as needed. They even change their names and pictures like they enjoy it. They are able to do this even during a communication.
Every business man/woman knows:
- Offers, which are sounding too good to be true are coming from criminals
- Nobody can give money as a gift in business. Everyone likes to earn more than he can give as the sum from the purchase price of the product and the given commission.
- As higher the promised commission per sale is, as more difficult will it be to sell the product
- Products, which are not able to sell, are getting bundled with the argument of social work or a charitable purpose like children hospital, help for the 3rd world, etc.
If you are thinking logically, then you would find out already the criminals on their offer on observing the above rules. In every case you should make a background check of your contact before you get in business with him. If you find out something negative, then give him the chance for an explanation. If the explanation is unbelievable and makes him more untrustworthy, then push him into the public and publish what is your opinion. This will help others in making their own decisions.
If everybody works this way, the scammer and other criminals will not have any chance in betraying others.
How to identify scammer by using free tools
By surfing around in the groups at LinkedIn, I have found only one campaign for call centers, which has been looking like a true offer. It has been posted around 9 months ago and the offer has included everything which is needed to make a decision for a call center owner. The poster got more than 800 positive replies to his offer.
Why in this case the spammers at LinkedIn are posting their offers every few hours and are using all possibilities for hiding themselves in the anonymity of the Internet?
If I’m making a real offer and have a good description for the campaign, then I’ll get a lot of replies and be able to make my choice by posting it only once. It seems that there is something wrong with their offer, as they are posting the same offer many times.
What is the purpose for spamming, if the spammers are not scamming? Are they collecting only email and skype addresses?
Nearly all users are already using free mailers at LinkedIn . This makes an immediately change of the email address possible whenever it is needed. It seems that these users made already the experience that their email addresses are getting sold for getting more spammed.
There is an old rule on the internet: "Don’t buy from spammer, you’ll get scammed". Especially new centers shall think about this rule if they don’t like to lose money.
Another rule is "As better the offer seems to be, as higher is the risk of running into fraud".
If someone is calling himself to be the "BEST", an "INDUSTRY LEADER" or something similar, than this one is proud about his success and is not hiding himself in anonymity, because his name is his trademark.
How to identify scammer by using free tools
You’ll get scammed if you have to trust to someone met over the internet. Make in each case a background check.
Start with the picture search. It is easy if you are using Google Chrome for browsing. Put your mouse pointer over their profile picture and by doing a right click chose “Search Google for this image”. Don’t let yourself get fooled from the result set, because you will also get the same picture with the name from their followers on the social networks and even from similar pictures (googles computers are thinking that the picture is looking similar).
If you get a domain name from them by email or as a link, then you can check their domain by using www.scamadviser.com. Just open www.scamadviser.com and enter their domain name or website name and press enter. You get a list of risks in the resultset.
Learn how to get the email headers from your mail client and to read email headers. There you get the route which the email has taken. You can for analyzing the use the free online tool at http://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders. Just copy the content of the email header into the form there. You get a route list, which the email has taken on it way with the ip addresses.
You can check the location of this ip addresses by using the free site http://www.iplocation.net/. The location shall match the promoted location and country of your communication partner. Be aware, that the location can be the next larger city next to the address of your communication partner.
If you have did not find something negative about your new business partner, then you should continue with Using Google for making a background check of your business partner