The publication she claimed to write for didn’t exist. And while her work history was impressive and grammatically correct, the brief biography below her name was written in semi-broken English.
That’s because “Jenifer” was a fake, one of an unknown number of fake profiles plaguing LinkedIn, the social network for job seekers that claims hundreds of millions of members.Still, “Jenifer” was convincing enough to persuade more than 500 others, including several well-known tech journalists, to add her to their LinkedIn connections. In fact, “Jenifer” was part of a nest of fakes whose profiles shared similar characteristics: attractive women with job histories copied from actual working journalists, coupled with odd misspellings.Fake profiles are hardly unique to LinkedIn. They’re routinely used to boost Twitter follower counts, promote Facebook pages, and entice you to sign up for dating sites by making it seem like attractive people are interested in you.
But unlike those others, fake LinkedIn profiles are much more likely to be used by criminals and hackers to infect your computer, steal your personal information, or compromise your corporate network. And it’s a problem that appears to be getting worse.
An epidemic of fakes
In a blog post published today, Satnam Narang, Symantec’s senior security response manager, announced the security company has uncovered dozens of LinkedIn profiles that could be used to launch “spear phishing” attacks against high-profile professionals.
The fakes followed the same pattern as those described above, only instead of pretending to be tech journalists, they posed as recruiters offering potential jobs to unsuspecting victims. Once the connection is made, the fakers could obtain their targets’ contact information and use that to send them malware.yahootech
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