THANK YOU LINKEDIN

Thank you LinkedIn, for your recent efforts in helping your users in removing the Bogus and Fake LinkedIn profiles that have plagued our LinkedIn Connection In-Boxes for quite some time.

Within the past year, the number of fake LinkedIn profiles has probably more than doubled.  These fake LinkedIn profiles have been the culprit of many Phishing Expeditions, attempts to gain access to real LinkedIn user account information, as well as other malicious and devious purposes.

You have heard our pleas and you have taken steps to allow your honest users to report these fake profiles to your customer support team and now I am pleased to see that when I typically report one of these fake profiles, within an hour they are gone.  I, and many other LinkedIn users are very pleased and excited to see that there is a genuine effort to regain LinkedIn as a Professional Networking Site.

I am going to go out on a limb now and ask for one more favor please.  Can you help us in reducing the number of fake recruiting companies that are starting to flood LinkedIn with advertisements of "Now Hiring All Positions In Calgary" or "Now Hiring All Positions In Saudi Arabia", "Now Hiring All Positions In United Kingdom".  These Bogus Ads are causing many job hungry LinkedIn users to openly post "Interested" or "Plz View My Profile".  I have even seen users openly putting their email addresses and phone numbers up in the comments sections under the posting.  I have done research on some of these culprits and find no validity to their claims, and more over, their simple put-together web-site-out-of-a-box do not list any jobs and only request the user to send their CV in a specified format.  For the sake of being to-the-point, Empire Recruitment is one of these I have researched as being a fake, and possibly one of the culprits that are sending out letters to people saying "Congratulations on your new position - in order to obtain your Work Visa, please send (a specified amount) to this address and we will get your Work Visa, you cannot start your new job until we have received your payment for your Work Visa".  Additionally, a couple of these fake recruiting companies and web sites have started using legitimate company's logos stating they have tons of jobs on their site and looking like they are an authorized agent for the legitimate company.  One these ads really caught my eye when it had the Jacobs logo, the company I work for.  After further research of being tossed back and forth between 2 - 3 different sites, I was able to identify that it was a site called InternationalJobs or something similar, that claimed to have jobs posted by these companies.  These sites are not seeking permission to use company logos or brands and are potentially breaking copyright laws on LinkedIn.

I have been an avid supporter and user of LinkedIn since 2004 and still believe its' primary focus is to be the number one Professional Networking and Career Site.  I have seen it grow from a simple networking site to a very complex site that stands far above the rest.  Please help us to help LinkedIn in maintaining the Professionalism in LinkedIn, and allow us to be able to remove these fake recruitment companies feeding off of the desperation of an unemployed workforce.

Again, LinkedIn, I give you a great big "THANK YOU" for the steps you are taking in helping us to clean up this great site.

My Best Regards,

Tim N. Turner