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Ask HN: Was this a phishing attempt?
9 points by starwind on April 25, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments
I got this email nominally from inmail-hit-reply@linkedin.com with a reply-to directing to <gobbledygook@reply.linkedin.com>

This email I pasted below says it's an inmail and at the bottom says they made a connection request but I don't see a message in my linkedin inbox. The person who supposedly sent it has a linkedin profile listing themselves as a recruiter for AWS. GMail didn't say "Be careful with this message" or anything like that. I am a data engineer and from what I can tell that's the right level for me, and I get pinged by AWS or Amazon to apply around once a month

Was this a phishing attempt or just LinkedIn weirdness?

Here's the Email:

Hello,

My name is <seemingly real AWS recruiter name> and I am a Recruiter with Amazon Web Services. My Hiring Manager and I recently reviewed your profile and we believe your background and skills could be a good fit for our L5 Data Engineer role. I wanted to gauge your interest in the position and its location to see if this is something you would want to pursue. Please note, we have other positions available, so if this role doesn’t pique your interest, let me know what you are interested in and I may be able to find a more suitable opportunity.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

As a Data Engineer, you will work on our Science team and partner closely with other Data Engineers, Data Scientists, BIEs, Technical Program Managers, and Software teams to create data pipelines that are used to optimize power, cooling, and supply chain decisions for AWS Infrastructure. You will be responsible for synthesizing data across our organization in a data warehouse environment. This job is able to be located in Seattle, WA.

You have a passion for Excellence. You have a proven track record of building the right Data Engineering solutions that scale, provide high availability, and require minimal maintenance. You write code that is clean, readable, and straight forward.

LINK:

https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/<yada yada yada>

I look forward to your response after you have reviewed the job description. Thank you for your time!

<seemingly real AWS recruiter name>

AWS Recruiter

You received an invitation to connect. LinkedIn will use your email address to make suggestions to our members in features like People You May Know.



Careful, you might end up getting scammed into working at Amazon.


Why would it be? Which part is suspicious to you? (I really can’t tell)


Probably should made it clearer. The email said it was an InMail from LinkedIn and the recruiter made a request to add me, but there was no message and no invite from them when I went to LinkedIn


I mostly ignore LinkedIn emails, but I feel like I've noticed this oddity as well. Some emails say both InMail and connection request.


OK, so it's not just me


Perhaps their account got banned between the time you go the email and logged in to see.


You might get more help if you paste the raw email message (not sure if Gmail allows you to see it) but be careful to redact any sensitive information in it.


i think it does, a button labeled 'original message' or something like that

i wouldn't be sure how much to redact tho


I think they were testing your ability to use "whois" and "dig". Amazon recruiters are tenacious so I wouldn't put it past them.


Phishing for what? The amazon.jobs website only requires a login to... itself: amazon.jobs. So it is not phishing for your amazon.com login...


Many people reuse emails and passwords, so if such a victim sign up for scam.com, all of their other credentials were basically compromised too.

(Not saying that that's what's happening here. I initially suspected that amazon.jobs was a scam site; I think OP did too, hence the question.)


I would be suspicious if I got a message on linkedin that wasn't a recruitment message.


Call and find out.




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