We wanted to share some important information with you for protecting your privacy on LinkedIn. Why would you want to do that, you might ask? Isn’t the point of LinkedIn to connect with others and grow your professional network? While yes, this is true, fraudsters have also learned that they can tap into this vast social network and use the details they obtain there to perpetrate scams.
JD Supra recently published an article that highlights our vulnerability to fraud on LinkedIn, especially when we don’t use settings to protect our information. According to the article, fraud using LinkedIn hasn’t been as highly publicized as it has with other social media platforms like FaceBook. Therefore, many of us may not have considered the risks.
According to the article, criminals can easily access and gather details about our co-workers, or our organization’s employees and vendors for services like HR, health benefits and even payroll. Then they use phishing scams to target the organization after doing their homework.
What Kind of Tactics Do Cybercriminals Use?
One commonly used tactic scammers use is to set up fake profiles to connect with LinkedIn users. According to Inc. magazine, they will often use attractive photos of women to get male LinkedIn users to accept their connection requests, and vice versa for female LinkedIn users.
Once connected, they typically will impersonate you or a colleague to either hack into your computer, business systems or to even sell your services to other users.
What Settings Are Recommended to Protect Privacy on LinkedIn?
Cyberscout has published a free guide with recommendations on how to adjust your LinkedIn settings to lower your risk of being the target of a scam. This informative guide explains how you can control who can view your information, how to limit access to your activity feed, how to keep others from your viewing your connections and much more.
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