misc: spotting a fake

this isn’t so much a technical post. it’s just an explanation of how to spot check a profile before you decide to accept an invitation.

let’s say you get a mysterious invitation from someone on linkedin. at one point it was pretty easy to spot these but as all feats of engineering goes, things usually get better – including social. :) the new thing seems to be female profiles using attractive photos as a means of getting someone to accept the invitation. this is the easiest way i know how to spot a fake:

  • make a copy of the photo. in windows land, you can just drag the image off the browser and drop it to the desktop. like so:

image

  • next, go to google’s image search and drag the photo to the search bar – don’t think bing supports this – as illustrated below:

image

  • voila. 83 results.

image

hope you found that useful.

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