You have to be really careful out there these days ... I have been approached by someone I dont know with an invitation to connect on LinkedIN. Their LinkedIN profile looks OK, indeed apparently someone I might well wish to be connected to, but as one might expect if you know me, I Googled them and their business (which ostensibly looks like a good proposition) ... but then, if you look carefully and start digging a bit, you start to notice things. First thing I noticed is that he (the founder of this business) claims to be {native of a mainstream EU country} operating his business out of {capital of that mainstream EU country} but his LinkedIN profile shows that he is actually located in Bulgaria ... curious, but not of itself bad, however this starts to ring warning bells (not least causing me to dig a bit deeper than I otherwise would). Then, on the business website homepage, there is an image of, apparently, the company head office (or at least that is clearly the impression that you are supposed to take away), however, just looking at it I sense that there is something not quite right with the logo on the front of the building, so I downloaded the image and did a Google Image Search (great little tool https://images.google ). Lo and behold I find the image is actually of a medical facility in Palo Alto in California (nowhere near where this business is supposed to be operating and, guess what, it doesnt have a corporate logo on the front), so, yes, the image has been taken and the logo photoshopped onto it ... alarm bells turn into red flags. Needless to say I will not be connecting to this person. Moral of story: it is really really easy these days to put up an apparently credible front online so never, ever, rely on one website, or profile (particularly the one they are offering you to look at) when checking something out, particularly if you are going to be parting with money for any kind of service. PS here is the true picture of the building hpsarch/index.php/news/view/102/
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 08:05:52 +0000
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