LinkedIn, the professional networking site has discovered and eliminated more than six lakh fake profiles of people who claimed to be employed with Apple.
A developer on LinkedIn, Jay Pinho, first raised a flag on noticing the rapidly increasing number of Amazon and Apple employees while keeping an eye on the headcounts at big companies on a daily basis. It was then noticed that the numbers fell drastically — by almost 50 per cent — and that too, almost overnight, and it was surely not because of any layoffs. This is just a way for scammers to make their accounts look more credible.
For instance, earlier this month, over 5.7 lakh people claimed to be employed with Apple, but this number dropped to about 2.8 lakhs the next day. In Amazon’s case, there was a 33 per cent drop in headcount of employees.
Therefore, LinkedIn took action and started to remove all the fake or bot accounts. It has made use of automation supported by reviews by human beings to identify such fake people on the platform.
Users, especially recruiters have been warned against such fake profiles as well as against fraudsters seeking funds via the platform.
While LinkedIn continues to clear its platform of fake profiles and spam accounts, this is not going to be easy with people using all sorts of complex tech to breach security. As per media reports, there are over 95 per cent fake profiles and spam accounts on the platform on certain days.
