Random facebook friend request from hot girl

Over the last few weeks I have seen a sharp increase in the number of fake invites claiming to be bankers, VPs and a general garden variety of invites from (really good looking) individuals across roles, organizations and locations. The focus of this post, and really a call to action for LinkedIn users and LinkedIn itself (now owned by Microsoft) is to practice common sense and be on guard when accepting invites.

This is not the focus of my post, but if you are interested in reading about why not to put your personal info on social networks, you can read this article.

I keep reminding everyone I know not to put their (real) date of birth, home phone number, vacation status and other personal details on social networks, LinkedIn included. Almost since its inception, LinkedIn has struggled with spam and fake invites from unscrupulous individuals who abuse the social network to harvest it for contact details, birthdays and other personal information which can then be used for spear phishing.