Fraudspotting

Employment frauds are rife when the number of job seekers is high. The more people need to find work, the more it's possible that they'll take chances on people and companies that they aren't familiar with. And so one sees things like this, where someone has created a profile pretending to be someone else, looking to lure people in. (It's since been taken down.) It's not an exact copy, by any means, but if one hadn't interacted with the real profile, it could be convincing. But, there are some telltales, which I've outlined with a red box. And since knowing what one should be looking for can help combat a more generalized suspicion, consider this a public service announcement.

Name redacted.

When looking at a LinkedIn profile, the number of connections a person has is only a link in two circumstances that I've been able to find. 1) A person is looking at their own profile. 2) A person is looking at a profile of someone who is a) a first-level (or direct) contact of theirs, and b) that person has enabled allowing others to see their direct connections. I'm not directly connected to the real person being impersonated here, so there shouldn't have been a link there.

And note the little box with the diagonal arrow pointing up and away; which indicates that the link goes to an external website... if there is a link for a contact, it will always be an internal LinkedIn link (it's a search that returns that person's direct contacts), so that marker, which is an explicit indicator that following it will take you to a different site, will not be there. Also, as 500 > 1, "connections" should be plural. The singular in the link gives away that something is amiss, along with the fact that while the link claims "500+ connection," the text below it very clearly says: "1 connection."

While the faked profile page is mostly a copy of the real thing, these telltales make it stand out as not genuine. Often the difference between being taken in and not is understanding the little things to look for.