News

LinkedIn Adds Message Safety Tools And Focused Inbox

The business networking and recruitment platform is cracking down on spam messages and scams.

Published

4 years ago

December 3, 2022

linkedin adds message safety tools and focused inbox

LinkedIn has just made some changes to its direct messaging service to help its 875 million members avoid spam and attempted scams. The business networking site is seeing growth rates of up to 34% a year, with 21 inMails sent every second, so it is keen to ensure that new and existing users are kept safe.

LinkedIn’s first change is the rollout of a new “focused” option for incoming messages, which will relegate unwanted mail to an “Other” box. Switchable automatic spam and harassment detection should help to send spam and legitimate mail to the right places, and a new feature is also available to report unwanted messages.

The company states that Focused Messages will help to present “the most relevant new opportunities and outreach”. LinkedIn says that the feature uses AI algorithms which learn from what you open and interact with to tailor a custom inbox experience.

Also Read: How To Find The Best Remote Work Opportunities In The Middle East

Alongside these messaging additions, LinkedIn says it will also add live captioning to video messages to improve accessibility — a move that is thought to signal the platform’s greater focus on messaging as a more standalone service.

The new features were being tried out in smaller control groups to gauge their effectiveness but are now going global, with all users expected to see the updates soon.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.