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It has been reported by SophosLabs, a security firm, that scammers are now using LinkedIn for their activities in order to avoid corporate spam filters.

Scammers have turned to social networking websites because corporate mail servers block such emails and mail coming through LinkedIn will be less susceptible to scam thus trapping unwary business workers.

A 419 Nigerian scam aka advance fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain. The 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based economy of Nigeria declined. It is called 419 scam after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code.

This week, a 419 scam was sent through LinkedIn website which claimed to be coming from a 22-year-old woman living in the Ivory Coast who has been passed $6.5 million by her deceased father. Part of the email is given below:

Before the death of my father on the 12th December 2007,in a private hospital here in Abidjan,he called me secretly to his bed side and told me that he kept a sum of $6.500 000 (six million five hundred thousand United States Dollars) in a bank in Abidjan Cote D’ivoire. He used my name as the next of kin in deposit of the fund.He also explained to me that it was because of this money he was poisoned by his business partner and that i should seek for foreign partner in a country of my choice where i would transfer this money and use it for investment purpose.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos said:

419 scammers may be hoping that the typical professional on LinkedIn has more disposable income than the typical MySpace or Facebook user and is potentially a bigger catch. Web 2.0 sites like LinkedIn and Facebook give strangers the ability to contact you without the defensive umbrella of your corporate anti-spam filter. Computer users should be on their guard against any unsolicited email as it could be from a cyber-conman.

Estimates of the total losses due to the scam vary widely. According to a 1997 newspaper article:

We have confirmed losses just in the United States of over $100 million in the last 15 months,” said Special Agent James Caldwell, of the Secret Service financial crimes division. And that’s just the ones we know of. We figure a lot of people don’t report them.