Your trust may only be worth 10$ on LinkedIn

On Thursday 12th of March, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from a LinkedIn user with the subject “My LinkedIn Account for Sale”. The following was the e-mail message:

Hello

I hope you are well

I have a Linkedin account with 1500 people in my direct network, which gives me access to approximately 13 million people. I getting out of my recruiting business and I can sell you this account just for $10 . Let me know if you are interested.

1) My Connections =1500
25% job seekers (All industries)
10% investors (All industries)
20% entrepreneurs (All industries)
20% business owners (All industries)
15% consultants ( All industries)
10% recruiters (All industries)

2)Two degrees away Friends of friends; each connected to one of my connections = 576,400+

3)Three degrees away Reach these users through a friend and one of their friends = 13,293,400+

best regards

David

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmagnet

The user is now gone – no great surprise. It does raise the issue that people can, if they so choose, sell their assets though in practical terms, they would to all effects be left with just the contacts as most sensible people would unconnect as soon as they realised what had happened. I can’t help think that selling a LinkedIn account for 10 $ must have been a test to see the feedback and gauge people’s reaction to the selling of trust. The outcome, whatever the case, seems to be a suspended or deleted account, I can’t imagine someone in LinkedIn needing 10 USD that badly. I would probably have donated…