How to spot a Phishing or Fake Email from “LinkedIn”
Most people dread getting spam or phishing emails that say they’re from LinkedIn, PayPal, Amazon or other well-known companies but I have been hoping to get one from “LinkedIn” and this week success.
As the prevalence of LinkedIn grows to almost half of the business professionals on the planet there is an increase in the phishing potential of fake LinkedIn communications, such as the one below:
They are easy to spot if you know what to look for, for example:
LinkedIn will never send you an email asking you to click any link, other than to go to view the message or adjust your settings.
The email address that most legitimate LinkedIn messages are sent you from is hit-reply@linkedin.com or messages-noreply@bounce.linkedin.com NOT from any other address.
LinkedIn will never ask you to confirm your email address whilst it is working. It will however, email you the moment your email address fails or bounces, which can be quite helpful, but it will say that your email has bounced, not ask you to confirm it.
Some phishing emails include www addresses or links that look great but when you put the mouse pointer over them, view the source or view them in plain text they are obviously NOT from LinkedIn.
So hopefully this will help you to not get caught, but as with all things LinkedIn, if you aren’t sure just ask the Help Centre or drop me a note.
Hi! I recently got a LinkedIn message from “LinkedIn Premium” offering me a free trial. When I click on the link to try for free, it does take me to a site within Linkedin.com (so seems legit), but then takes me to a login page, and after I try to log in, it says “Sorry, we need you to reset your password as a security precaution.” It then sends me an email (from security-noreply@linkedin.com) to change my password… again, the link is a https://www.linkedin.com/ address, but is this real or fake? Why would I need to change my password for this? Any advice will help, thanks!
Dear Nadia, As with all things security related I would check before proceeding. I have not know LinkedIn ask for a password reset for an upgrade ever before so that makes me cautious, assuming you use LinkedIn regularly. You might want to contact LinkedIn to check (this blog will help you https://thelinkedinman.com/are-you-fed-up-trying-to-find-out-how-to-contact-linkedin/) and also think about reading this blog (https://thelinkedinman.com/everyone-should-pay-to-upgrade-their-linkedin-but/) about upgrading or not. Hope those help but I would certainly crack on and do it now as opposed to waiting. Best wishes, James – The Linked In Man