Award-winning web development since 1995
Written: August 30, 2019
We all have online accounts and the process of providing a username and password is quite commonplace, but exactly how strong is your password? Just today on LinkedIn I received a message from a confirmed contact that is also freelance, and it talked about an opportunity, but somehow the message didn’t look quite right to me:
First of all, we know each other, but the wording sounded formal and unlike the person. Secondly, the link was going to something on Amazon Web Services and the page just didn’t look legit:
Finally, clicking the link to Open File brought me to yet another insecure page, that was phishing for my Microsoft credentials:
At this point I was 100% certain that this was a phishing scam, but how did that message get sent within LinkedIn in the first place?
I did a quick text message to my freeleance contact and quickly confirmed that he did NOT send me a message on LinkedIn, rather a hacker had guessed his password and used his account to send out this message. My contact was able to change his LinkedIn password, thus securing control of his account and locking out the hacker.
Moral of the story? Well, if something in a LinkedIn message seems off, or not like the personality of your contact, then confirm before proceeding. When you confirm with your contact, use either email or text, not LinkedIn, because the hacker is logged into the victim’s account and will try to assure you that all is well, when in fact all is not well.
Tags: LinkedIn, phishingI used LinkedIn for both a personal account and a company page, so one of the first things that I do after meeting a new person and receiving their business card is to connect with them on LinkedIn. Yesterday I met Kate Johnson from LegalShield, and sent her a request to connect which she did. When I used LinkedIn and searched for her profile this morning, I expected the status to say that we were connected however I saw the familiar blue Connect button still displayed indicating that we weren’t connected yet.
Looking at the fine print under the Relationship tab it does indeed say that we were connected on 4/21/2015, but the bug persists in showing the blue Connect button. So even high-tech companies like LinkedIn have bugs in their cloud-based software as a service.
I recommend that you consider using LinkedIn as a way to showcase both your own professional accomplishments and those of your company also. Even with the occasional bug LinkedIn is still quite a useful networking tool that builds awareness for both you and your company.
Tags: LinkedIn
Kara Tobey
Kara Tobey is a Portland-based career coach that first contacted me in July 2011 and asked about getting her web site developed. I kept in contact with her, asked questions to better learn her business, wrote a proposal, then created mock-ups for review. Today we just launched:
I knew that Kara wanted to update her own web pages and do some blogging, so we used WordPress, the number one web-based Content Management System.
When Kara writes a new blog post on her web site that same post will automatically publish on both her Facebook Page and LinkedIn status, reaching a wider audience with less manual effort.
It’s very rewarding for me to help another small business owner create a web presence and pursue their dream to help others.
“Daniel, I cannot thank you enough for my website design and additional services. What a beautiful outcome and you could not have made it any easier! You showed me how simple it is to reach out and offer helpful information to those who will benefit. I highly recommend Tualatin Web to anyone who needs an online presence! Happy Holidays and hope to cross paths with you in the coming year!”
Kara Tobey
Tags: Facebook Page, LinkedIn, WordPress
I’ll be presenting to the Portland Metropolitan Photographer’s Association on Thursday, July 9th starting at 7PM. More details here.
Maybe you’ve got accounts at several social media sites, like: Plaxo, LinkedIn, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter.
Wouldn’t it be easier to post once and have all these sites updated?
If that’s appealing then browse over to ping.fm and check out their free service that does just that for you. I have no idea what their business model is and I suspect that they won’t be in business in two years, but hey, it works and it’s free. Two of my favorite things on the web.
Update
Since I first wrote this blog ping.fm has been bought by seesmic, then bought by hootsuite.
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Yes you are correct, and I experience the same bug.
However, just some 30 minutes ago, I noticed that the majority of the ‘bug’ connections became corrected. I will see again in some 5 hours from now if all of the ‘bugged’ connections are corrected.
Also, i have another bug in that my ‘invitations’ label is gone in my inbox! So I can only accept invitations through the small notification icon, which is quite unhandy.
Thanks for reporting the bug and feel free to connect with me.
Ronald de Mol.
LinkedIn: https://nl.linkedin.com/in/ronalddemol
Ronald, Yes, this bug was transient in nature and I’m now really connected with Kate.
David, It seems there is another bug in effect now, in that about 50% of the new connections do not show up in the contact list, while in fact the connection is made.
It also might not deliver ‘inbox’ mails send to those contacts that do not show up in the list. (because I can actually see a lack of response there).
For the past about 15 hours I notice this effect very strongly, and so far no correction has been made yet.
People who only get a connection so now and then might not even notice it, but for someone (like me) who receives many invitations daily, I can clearly notice the effect.
Syncing is sporadically working, but does not resolve the missing contacts.
Let’s hope it is resolved soon.
Daniel I mean… (My head is spinning with names of missing contacts).