How to Spot Fake Social Media Profiles

Fake profiles on Twitter are nothing new, and in the world of online dating they're quite common as well. You might think LinkedIn has escaped all this, but it hasn't. Help is at hand, however, because some of the tools used for other social networks work just as well on LinkedIn.

Stock Photos

Recently I was intrigued by a profile thrown up by LinkedIn's "people you may know" feature. Something looked a bit off about the photo, which had me looking at the rest:

I've hidden the company names, as they are all apparently legitimate. We'll come back to the photo, but notice the lack of details supplied for the three roles listed under experience, the 500+ connections, and the fact that she's a 2nd level connection - i.e. people I know apparently know her. Or not, based on my checks.

Back to that photo. It looks a bit like a stock photo, and that's because it is. You can click here to see it listed on a stock photo web site. So, if we come across a photo, suspicious or otherwise, and we want to check it out, how can we do this? Google Image Search is a good option, but there's another useful search tool called TinEye which comes in really handy for this. It's a reverse image search, so you give it an image, and it finds instances of it on the web.

Give it a try now, the URL of the stock photo is
http://www1.imagedirekt.com/idIdpremid/000043000/43354.jpg
- just copy this and paste it into the box on the TinEye home page, and you'll get over 600 results.

Magazine Photos

This second LinkedIn profile is a public one, so you don't need to be logged in to LinkedIn to view it, here's the link: http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/bonny-andrew/15/a34/646/

Let's put TinEye to work straight away. The URL for the image is
https://m1-s.licdn.com/media/p/3/000/066/3bf/23ddce7.jpg
and TinEye will find 7 hits for this, and from looking at them you'll discover that this is, in fact, Indian film actress and model Trisha Krishnan. You can view the original cover of Maxim which featured this photo by clicking here.

Summary

I've mentioned before that it's important to use a photo, and to use the right photo, on your LinkedIn profile, so I should add that the "right photo" should NOT be of someone else, as it makes you look suspicious. Equally if you're approached by someone with a dubious looking photo, tools like TinEye are a quick and easy way to check. Incidentally, there are browser plugins available which you can use to cut out the copy and paste effort, and they are well worth adding to your browser.

Bletchley Park - Home of the Codebreakers

I visited Bletchley Park in 2003 for a BCS meeting, and last weekend I finally managed to get back there for a day trip. Obviously a lot has changed in the near-decade since my first visit. There's even more to see, too much for one day in fact, so it's just as well that your entrance fee now gives you a year-long season ticket, so you can go back as many times as you like to see all of it.

The best way to see the estate is to join one of the regular guided tours which leave from the mansion - these start with a brief talk indoors before heading out to explore. The tours take in a lot, and you should allow 2 hours if you include the optional tour extension to see Tunny and Colossus (there is a separate charge for this in addition to your admission fee).

There's also a great cafe in Hut 4 for your morning and afternoon cuppa, and a variety of lunch options as well, a great way of keeping the hunger at bay and providing some more support for Bletchley Park at the same time. Cake was extensively tested, and found to be very good.

On this trip there wasn't time for everything, so the Churchill Collection and the National Museum of Computing will have to wait for next time, along with a longer look around the Block-B Exhibition Centre.

There's a few photos here.

Fix for Upload Image bug on LinkedIn Company Pages

I've been playing recently with LinkedIn's Company Pages feature, and discovered a frustrating issue with the upload process for logo images and also products and services showcase images.

For some reason, these images simply don't upload, and after some playing, I got some help from Firefox:

This had me off looking at the HTML for the page, which revealed the problem. Some time ago, LinkedIn implemented HTTPS on all its pages, advising users, quite correctly, to switch over to this as soon as possible. This means that the URL for the "edit company overview" page will look like this:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/myco-ltd/edit

However, within that page, the form to upload images has the following action URL:

http://www.linkedin.com/mupld/upload

It is this mismatch between secure and not-secure that gives rise to the message from Firefox, and it turns out that this interferes with the image upload process.

Therefore the workaround for this is to switch off the option to use HTTPS when possible (Settings -> Account -> Manage Security Settings). The dialogue looks like this:

Untick the box, save, and then navigate back to your company page, making sure you are now using HTTP and not HTTPS, and you should find that the images now upload correctly. When you have completed your work, you should of course return to the security settings and switch HTTPS back on.

Useful Reading on the LinkedIn Password Problem

Photo credit: Mario Sundar on Flickr

There's a lot been published on this over the last day or so, which means that there's not much point repeating it all, but I have seen some useful articles and blog posts which are worth sharing.

First up is to say that LinkedIn are providing updates on this, as they should, the latest one is here. This does mention "hashing" and "salting", and you can find out more about these terms in this short post by Peter Vidani.

You can get some advice on finding out if your password was compromised over at Avinash, this post includes a link to a tool that you can use, but as this involves typing in your password, make sure this isn't a password you're still using anywhere. You've changed your LinkedIn password anyway, haven't you? Haven't you?

Finally, Troy Hunt has some useful advice on managing your passwords generally, as well as dealing with this specific incident.