Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

OT but still about linkedin. I wonder if somebody could help me figure this out

I have a new email account on my own domain. For the sake of this discussion lets pretend my domain is MYDOMAIN.com, but keep in mind my actual domain isn't some words put together that a human could conceivably guess.

Just now I got two confirmation emails from linkedin. They read as usual:

    FIRSTNAME, your pin is XXXXXX. Please confirm your email address.
("FIRSTNAME" is not my first name, it's some other person's, presumably.)

I received these confirmation emails on [email protected] where NEVERUSED is some string that I've never used before anywhere.

What is going on here?



Have you checked to make sure your domain wasn't previously owned by somebody else?

There are sites where you can lookup previous ownership such as https://whois-history.whoisxmlapi.com/


What are you suggesting? That someone owned the domain, lost it, and after losing it tries to create a linkedin account with it?


Maybe they already had an account with that domain years ago and are trying to log back it.

Or perhaps it is just some random spammer creating linkedin accounts with random email addresses

Or perhaps the email doesn't actually come from linkedin and it is a phishing you to click though


> Maybe they already had an account with that domain years ago and are trying to log back it.

This wasn't "log back in", this is a new account created.

> Or perhaps it is just some random spammer creating linkedin accounts with random email addresses

This is what I imagined, but I don't understand why someone would do this.

> Or perhaps the email doesn't actually come from linkedin and it is a phishing you to click though

No, these emails come from linkedin.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: