How to Spot FAKE LinkedIn Profiles!

Ever receive a connection invite from a profile you've never encountered before?

When you want to increase your LinkedIn network you may want to accept requests from like minded profiles BUT are they really people like you?

Increasingly sophisticated social networking profiles are targeting you for a variety of scams. Criminal organizations know who you are, what you like, your comments & reposts... in short they have everything they need to get your attention and your action to do what they want!

DON'T FALL INTO THEIR TRAP

Here are a few RED FLAGS which will evolve over time

1. Connection request to initiate a non professional conversation or "can i ask you a question?"
2. More > About this Profile > Joined recently (although increasingly dormant profiles created years ago are activated)
3. Below 500+ Connections/Followers
4. No Contact Info beyond profile url
5. Experience, Education, Interests that mirror your own Industry

BUT HOW CAN YOU REALLY TELL IT's FAKE?

This is not an exact science but for now without AI generated content, it's still fairly easy to confirm it...

1. you copy the About summary or content in Experience, Education, Projects, Volunteering... copy a paragraph you are quite certain is unique
2. search all of LinkedIn, make sure you search with "parenthesis"

for example in the image above "The Caltech Y, Peer Advocate, Health Advocate and Emergency Medical Responder, Board of Control Secretary, TechReach (Executive Board), CS12 Algorithmic Justice TA, Hixon Writing Center (HWC)"

with 33 hits, at least one of them is the original profile 
(which may also be fake)        

BUT by far the surest way to know for certain is when there's a Licenses & certifications section in the profile, you can simply click/tap Show credentials and search for that unique ID should never be on more than 1 profile

So what can you do about FAKE profiles?

1. Report or Block the entire account - it's not a real person!!! (if you do not BLOCK their connection request automatically follows your activity on LinkedIn even when you Ignore them, you MUST Block them to stop them from seeing your Likes, Comments, Reposts)
2. Ignore & click "I don't know this person" (this will curtail the profile from sending invitations)

It matters to everyone in the LinkedIn community to help prevent scams! Thanks

If you value this post, pls feel free to ‘like' or share it with your LinkedIn, Facebook, X (fka Twitter) or Google+ friends. Comments are highly appreciated. Thks for reading! See my other posts at?https://www.dhirubhai.net/today/author/davidtang