I recently wrote about receiving a spam message on LinkedIn from what appeared to be a fake LinkedIn account.  You can read that post and decide for yourself if I received a spam message from a fake account.

Today there was another spam message in my LinkedIn inbox.  Why do I say it’s spam?  Because the message I received was an unsolicited sales message in the form of a “hey, check this out” message.

The one common thread in the two cases is that the name Carl Doppler appears to be associated with both.  In the first case he was listed as the VP of operations with PMA Desk.  In this case Doppler Internet , Inc. is listed as the Registration Provider.  Once again I’ll present the facts you make your own decision in regards to what’s going on.

The message:

Notice the link to http://www.webcontentthatsells.com.

Here’s that page:

Here the Who Is information I found:

Who is Sandi Scotti?  Is she a real person or is this a fake account?  I don’t care because it doesn’t change the fact that I am being spammed on LinkedIn.  If you’re interested here is the profile of Sandy.

Like the last message there are some credibility issues.  First there is the picture, that while it looks more real than the last still has a stock photo look to it.  Maybe she just has a great photographer.  There’s also the number of connections.  Do I really need someone (?) with 2 connections telling me about a great social media tool.  Finally the lack of URLs makes you wonder? (note:  a search of Sandi Scotti and Norlog turned up no results on Google).

These messages are not coming to me from a direct connection, rather they are being sent through groups.  Groups allow you to send messages to other group members.  Here are the groups I share with Sandi Scotti:

So once again here is what I know.  I received a spam message from Sandi Scotti that in the end directs people to http://www.webcontentthatsells.com.  Her account is lacking in personal or business details.  I know that in both cases the name of Carl Doppler appears (1st- VP of Operations with PMA Desk, This one – on the Who Is page).

You can make your decision on what this is and isn’t.

I’ve been looking into this and other cases of spam and what I’ve found is that there appear to be two cases of spam activity:

1.  Real people that are your direct connections or group members are sending direct sales messages to their network.  This rarely works and can harm the person’s brand.

2.  Fake accounts are being created to connect with others or join groups, and then to send out spam messages.  I’ve spoken with some folks who explained that in many of these cases there may be 1,000’s of fake accounts created by outsourced labor in the Phillipines that are being used to spam the LinkedIn membership.  The accounts are rarely live for long.

LinkedIn better find a way to identify and stop this behavior or it could begin the deterioration of the network.

What can you do?  Simple.  Ignore any sales messages you receive that are unsolicited.  These are spam messages and do you really want to work with a product or person that doesn’t get that in social media it’s the conversations that lead to new business.

You can also post the the spam message you received as a comment under this post.

Finally notify LinkedIn of this blog post and of the spam message.

Have you received one of these messages?

Tags: brad kenzie, carl doppler, chicago, more social leads, personal Marketing Assistant, pma desk, pmadesk, sofcar, www.moresocialleads.com, www.pmadesk.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 12:16 am and is filed under LinkedIn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.