LinkedIn takes measures to stop fake profiles, cyber threat actors

LinkedIn has introduced three new features that it hopes will stop an influx of fake profiles on its platform, as well as threat actors using social engineering and phishing attacks. Part of the new methods deployed are verifying profiles if an authentic work email or phone number has been supplied.

Similar to Twitter and Instagram, accounts will also now display when the profile was created under a new “About this profile” section.

LinkedIn has been notorious for years over its abuse by foreign nationals, intelligence agencies, and threat actors looking to exploit legitimate users. Malware distribution, cyber espionage, stolen credentials or phony job offers are just the beginning of known tactics used on the platform.

LinkedIn also claims that it will use artificial intelligence to detect AI-generated user profile images.

"Our new deep-learning-based model proactively checks profile photo uploads to determine if the image is AI-generated using cutting-edge technology designed to detect subtle image artifacts associated with the AI-based synthetic image generation process without performing facial recognition or biometric analyses." - LinkedIn

Chats that suggest moving the conversation off of LinkedIn to a platform like WeChat or WhatsApp will now be met with an auto-generated warning and the ability to report to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is attempting to clean up its image amongst a myriad of problems that have plagued the platform for years. It’s unclear if this will be enough to mitigate the problems, or just encourage threat actors to devise new methods.

It also raises new privacy concerns with image scanning and chat transcript intent. Despite other platforms using this tech for years, it increasingly has become normalized amongst social networks and e-commerce platforms.