Fake Diane on Linkedin

Ever seen this on Linkedin? I have. Multiple times. The text is: So, I get an invitation to link today from someone calling herself Dianne and claiming to be a programme director based in the UAE. No connections but membership of lots of groups related to cyber security. I thought I'd do a reverse image search and it seems Dianne  has lots of other jobs given by the number of hits I got. You know what? I don't think she's real...

David I think you might be right! And trying to find out can be risky.

So far, here is what I can discern. If you do a reverse picture search you currently get about 146 results all different businesses.

One of the links is a Twitter user, @JoannaWalton82, seems to be trying to sell email lists. Last tweet was in 2015.

Deep down in the results are a number of free software sites all with the same variation on the picture.

Using a safe browser, (Authenti8 Silo), I went to one of the sites and download the free software and then upload it to Virus Total.

Cool, ransomware! With apologies to Cheech and Chong, good thing I didn't step in it. To summarize. We do want to be careful who we link to. We don't want free software from sites buried deep in search engine results. This isn't the first or last time this has and will happen, perhaps you remember fake cyber analyst Robin Sage.