Since Elon Musk’s takeover bid of Twitter, fake profiles on Twitter have been rather in the spotlight.
What is less in the spotlight, but is perhaps even more impactful, is the number of fake profiles on Linked in.
Last week, we at The Children’s Post were shocked to find that someone had put their designation as “Postmaster” at The Children’s Post of India.
Topgain Consulting Private Limited, a niche consulting firm with exactly two employees – its two directors, had one person impersonate as CEO and run a full fledged recruitment scam using the name of the company. We had to really struggle to get this profile unlisted as an employee.
In August, the CEO of Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, tweeted that while 7000 profiles on Linked in have listed Binance as their current company, only about 50 are actually right.
After this tweet, apparently, the list was cleaned up by Linkedin.
Jay Pinho and his contribution to LinkedIn awareness
Jay Pinho is a developer who tracks data on Linkedin.
On October 10, 576,672 people had listed Apple Inc as their current employer. Jay reported these numbers to Krebson Security, a security firm, who then printed the variation.
The next day, half of these profiles were gone. They just vanished. Only 284,991 employees remained.
Likewise, the number of people who said that they worked at Amazon Inc. went from 12,49,921 to 838,601.
Linkedin confirmed to a media outlet that they had taken steps to remove fake profiles.
How do fake profiles get created?
It is very easy to create and sustain a fake profile on LinkedIn.
First of all, there is absolutely no check to ensure that the employment information being filled by the person is geniune.
Secondly, even after a company becomes aware of this fraud, they cannot report it to LinkedIn, because the reporting mechanism does not ask for details, does not take the authority of the person making the report, and does not even get back to the person making the report whether any action has been taken.
What are fake accounts used for?
Marriage, job recruitment, asking for money, getting a job – a fake profile can be used for many things.
How do we check?
As employers, please keep checking the new employees on Linkedin that use the name of your company and keep reporting them. At this time, there is no helpdesk available to companies and there is little else that they can do.
We also make a public post on our company page with a link to their Linkedin Profile and announce that they are not connected to the company.
As professionals, double check the profiles for veracity before accepting connection requests. Definitely do not give money to anyone whom you only know through social media, even Linkedin (perhaps, especially LinkedIn).