Social media scams using false identities

Fake profiles are rampant on social media these days. I’ve even had my own photograph stolen to falsely connect to other people.

The purpose is invariably to spam you or to scam you. So you have to be careful.

I’ve written about this before.

So I thought I’d share a particularly pathetic attempt to scam me today.

I got an invitation from “Bruce Diaz”, representing himself as a tech columnist for the New York Times.

Huh? Never heard of that name. A quick Google search shows no such man at the NY Times.

So I search for his image on Google (you should always do this on anything suspicious).

Hmm… no luck there:

So I go to TinEye, a reverse-image search engine and upload his picture.

Bingo! It’s not “Bruce Diaz”, it’s “Attractive Young Man” on Shutterstock.

I reported it to LinkedIn. But you might still find him for the next few hours.

So don’t just accept a social media invitation with out checking!