Overview
This article shares practical steps taken to significantly reduce phishing and spam by limiting publicly available personal and professional information, especially data sourced from LinkedIn and aggregation sites.
Where the Problem Originates
Most phishing attempts can be traced back to information scraped from LinkedIn and data broker sites. Recruiter and sales tools amplify this exposure by aggregating names, roles, email patterns, and company associations.
Anonymize Your Public Profile
Using only a first name and last initial and modifying the public LinkedIn URL reduces automated scraping. This small change limits easy correlation between identity and employer.
Limit Company Details
Removing current and recent company information reduces targeting. Without a clear employer listed, phishing campaigns lose context and credibility, which lowers success rates.
Request Direct Removal
Directly contacting data aggregation sites works surprisingly well. Polite but firm requests citing stress and security risk to an employer often result in fast removals. Manual contact is more reliable than automated removal links.
Reduce Publicly Available Documents
References, certifications, and downloadable files can expose full names and metadata. Even PDFs are commonly scraped. Removing or limiting these reduces secondary data leakage.
Be Cautious With Removal Services
Paid data removal services often trigger a cycle where sites rescrape profiles. A more effective approach is to reduce available data at the source so future scraping yields little value.
Measured Impact
After reducing public exposure, phishing attempts dropped to near zero and spam was reduced by roughly ninety nine percent. While not perfect, meaningful reduction is far better than accepting constant noise.
Tradeoffs and Considerations
Some professionals need visibility for job searching or sales. These steps are best suited for those prioritizing security and reduced disruption over exposure.
Final Thought
Phishing thrives on publicly available context. Reducing that context weakens attacks dramatically. Trimming public details is a practical, low cost defense that delivers real results.
Mahalo