Category Archives: Employment Fraud

LinkedIn Adds Verified Emails, Profile Creation Dates

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For whatever reason, the majority of the phony LinkedIn profiles reviewed by this author have involved young women with profile photos that appear to be generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

We’re seeing rapid advances in AI-based synthetic image generation technology and we’ve created a deep learning model to better catch profiles made with this technology. AI-based image generators can create an unlimited number of unique, high-quality profile photos that do not correspond to real people. Fake accounts sometimes use these convincing, AI-generated profile photos to make their fake LinkedIn profile appear more authentic. Continue reading LinkedIn Adds Verified Emails, Profile Creation Dates→

Battle with Bots Prompts Mass Purge of Amazon, Apple Employee Accounts on LinkedIn

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On October 10, 2022, there were 576,562 LinkedIn accounts that listed their current employer as Apple Inc. The next day, half of those profiles no longer existed. A similarly dramatic drop in the number of LinkedIn profiles claiming employment at Amazon comes as LinkedIn is struggling to combat a significant uptick in the creation of fake employee accounts that pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate users. Continue reading Battle with Bots Prompts Mass Purge of Amazon, Apple Employee Accounts on LinkedIn→

Massive Losses Define Epidemic of ‘Pig Butchering’

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U.S. state and federal investigators are being inundated with reports from people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in connection with a complex investment scam known as “pig butchering,” wherein people are lured by flirtatious strangers online into investing in cryptocurrency trading platforms that eventually seize any funds when victims try to cash out. Continue reading Massive Losses Define Epidemic of ‘Pig Butchering’→

How to Tell a Job Offer from an ID Theft Trap

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One of the oldest scams around — the fake job interview that seeks only to harvest your personal and financial data — is on the rise, the FBI warns. Here’s the story of a recent LinkedIn impersonation scam that led to more than 100 people getting duped, and one almost-victim who decided the job offer was too-good-to-be-true. Continue reading How to Tell a Job Offer from an ID Theft Trap→