Business

Not just Twitter. LinkedIn has a fake account problem, it’s trying to fix it


Anyone who relies on LinkedIn for jobs, business partners or other opportunities knows that the business social networking site has a problem with fake profiles. While that’s no different from other social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook, it presents a different set of problems for users who want to use LinkedIn for professional purposes.

From January 1 to June 30, more than 21 million fake accounts were detected and removed from LinkedIn, According to the company’s community report. Although 95.3% of those fake accounts were unsubscribed by automated defenses, according to the company, the number of fake accounts detected increased by nearly 28% over a six-month period. before. LinkedIn says it now has more than 875 million members on its platform.

While MicrosoftThe Google-owned professional social media platform has rolled out new features in recent months to help users better determine if someone contacting them is a real or fake profile, security experts say. Cybersecurity says there are a number of things users on the platform can do to protect themselves.

Mike Clifton, executive vice president and chief information and digital officer at Alorica, a global customer service outsourcing company, says creators of fake LinkedIn profiles sometimes try to attract attention. engagement through content that links to malicious websites.

“For example, we see things that revolve around posts and promote work events, such as webinars, that use real photos and real information of people to legitimize the information. and get other people to sign up, often on a fake third-party website,” Clifton said.

How to avoid being scammed by fraudulent profiles

Cybercriminals often rely on human contact to give LinkedIn users the impression that a fake profile belongs to someone they know or is two degrees worse than someone they know. “This has been going on for years and is still able to bypass even sophisticated fraud detection tools,” says Clifton. “Just as we remind our employees and customers, it’s important to stay vigilant and engage with caution on social media to protect your information.”

Recruiters who rely heavily on LinkedIn to find potential employees can find fake profiles especially troublesome, said Akif Khan, vice president and analyst at research firm Gartner.

“Also, in other areas of fraud management – for example, when suspicious e-commerce transactions are being manually reviewed – agents will review social media sites including LinkedIn for try to see if [a] Khan said.

For these reasons, it can serve the bad guys with fake LinkedIn profiles, Khan said.

Gartner is seeing the problem of fake accounts across all social media platforms. “The bad guys are trying to create fake identities and make them look real by leaving a digital footprint that looks legit on different platforms,” Khan said.

However, it’s more likely that the fake profiles are set up manually, Khan said, when bad actors are creating a large number of fake profiles — which can be used to abuse the advertising process or sell large numbers of followers or likes on demand — they will use bots to automate the process of creating fake accounts.

The challenge for LinkedIn users is that profiles on social media platforms are easy to create and often aren’t verified in any way. LinkedIn has asked users if they encounter any content on the platform that appears to be fake to report it to the company. Users should pay special attention to profiles with unusual profile pictures or incomplete employment history and other signs including inconsistencies in profile picture and education.

“Always seek endorsements from other sources if you are reviewing an account and are making decisions based on what you see,” says Khan. “The bigger issue here is with the platforms themselves. They need to make sure they have the right measures in place to detect and prevent automated account creation, especially at scale.”

What LinkedIn is doing to detect fakes and bots

Detection tools do exist, but their use is not an exact science. “Verifying a user’s identity when creating an account would be another effective way to make it more difficult to set up a fake account, but such identity verification would have a cost and impact impact.” user experience,” said Khan. “So these platforms are trying to strike a balance in terms of account integrity and not make users stop creating accounts,” he said.

LinkedIn is taking steps to address the problem of fake accounts.

The site is using technology like artificial intelligence along with teams of experts to remove policy-violating content it detects before that content goes online. The majority of fake accounts detected are caught by automated defenses like AI, according to a report. blog post from Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of product management at LinkedIn.

LinkedIn declined to comment further.

The company is also working with peer-to-peer companies, policymakers, law enforcement and government agencies in an effort to prevent fraudulent activity on the site.

In its latest effort to prevent fake accounts, LinkedIn rolled out new features and systems in October to help users make more informed decisions about the members they’re interacting with. , as well as enhancing its automated systems to remove dishonest practices and profiles from the platform.

The “about this profile” feature shows the user when the profile was created and last updated, along with information on whether members have verified the work phone number and/or email associated with it. linked to their account or not. The goal is that seeing this information will help the user decide whether to accept a connection request or reply to a message.

LinkedIn says rapid advances in AI-based composite image generation technology have led to the creation of a deep learning model to better capture AI-generated profiles. Rodriguez writes in a blog post, and fake accounts sometimes use these AI-generated profile pictures to create profiles. appear more realistic.

A deep learning model that proactively examines uploaded profile photos to determine if an image is AI-generated, using technology designed to detect sophisticated image artifacts associated with the process create AI-powered composite images — without performing facial recognition or biometric analysis, writes Rodriguez.

This model enhances the effectiveness of LinkedIn’s automated abuse protections to help detect and remove fake accounts before they can reach members.

The company also added a warning for some LinkedIn messages that include high-risk content that could compromise user security. For example, users may be alerted to messages asking them to move the conversation to other platforms as it could be a sign of fraud.

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