From zero to spam in just seven weeks on LinkedIn

At the turn of the year I created a new LinkedIn account as a bit of an experiment. The idea was to use it to target some clear marketing messages to local businesses but also as a test to see just how secure my data was.

To do this I created a brand new email address on a domain which had no other email addresses and using a formula at odds with standard naming conventions i.e. firstname.surname@ etc.

This morning, to my surprise, in my inbox is an email from the Indian Sub-continent, badly written, full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes and boasting a range of ‘major clients’, none of which I’d ever hear of.

The astonishing bit was that this email was sent out as part of a mailer from mailkitchen.com and obviously SPAM. Of course anyone can create a free account and send emails to anywhere in the world, but how did this individual get my email address?

The answer of course is that it was harvested from LinkedIn and now I’m stuck on a list somewhere. The dilemma now is do I ‘unsubscribe’ and thereby confirm that my email address is real or do I simply ignore it in the hope it goes away?

Whatever I do I’m damned really. The future holds many more spam emails I’m sure but one thing we do now know is that LinkedIn is an open goal for anyone creating spam lists.