A recent report from Check Point Research revealed a shocking statistic about the dangers of LinkedIn, the social media platform for professionals. It was reported that the Microsoft-owned business platform is impersonated in nearly half of all phishing attacks globally.
That’s saying a lot considering the number of phishing attacks that take place yearly.
One of the ways scammers leverage LinkedIn to deploy their phishing attack is when they zero in on anyone seeking a new job or career change. So imagine you’re on LinkedIn looking for employment, only to become a victim of a cybercrime. You went looking for a solution to your career problems but ended up in a dilemma because someone scammed you.
While e-mails like “You have 1 new invitation” or “63 people have viewed your profile” can be authentic, verifying the e-mail address it’s sent from to ensure that it’s genuinely from LinkedIn is critical. These impersonators will send e-mails that look identical to the real ones, with links to fake LinkedIn pages that will rip off your information as soon as you enter it.
Another way cybercriminals leverage LinkedIn is by creating fake profiles and messaging people about job opportunities.
Once you’re “on the hook”, they’ll either ask for a small payment upfront to process your application (that you’ll never see again) or send you a link to a form you must fill out that’s a phishing link in disguise. This is how they can get all the information they need from you to do their dirty work.
LinkedIn is aware of the problem and is working on developing advanced security features to protect its users. These are the 4 security features that LinkedIn has deployed that you can use today.
Suspicious Message Warnings
LinkedIn’s technology can detect messages from people who are attempting to take you off the platform or are saying something potentially inappropriate and will send you a warning notification. This proactive feature aims to identify and flag messages that exhibit red flag activities commonly associated with phishing schemes, such as unexpected links or requests for sensitive information.
By scrutinizing patterns and anomalies in communication, LinkedIn’s system seeks to protect users from falling victim to fraudulent schemes that could compromise their personal or professional data. The system works by analyzing various indicators and leveraging machine learning algorithms to detect potential phishing attempts in real time.
Which is a nice feature to have.
Profile Verification
This feature allows you to verify your page’s authenticity.
By submitting an additional form of ID, you can get a verification badge on your profile, so anyone who looks at it knows you are who you say you are. This is a valuable feature since scammers are always looking for fresh targets and have pages that get shut down quickly, so they don’t bother keeping their information up-to-date. By implementing additional authentication methods, such as linking to official documents or utilizing multi-factor authentication, LinkedIn aims to provide users with greater confidence in the authenticity of their connections.
This verification process not only helps to curb fraudulent activity but also serves to enhance trust within professional networks. After all, LinkedIn is a social media platform for professionals where people are looking to connect and conduct legal and legitimate business, as well as networking online.
Ensuring interactions are done with genuine and verified individuals, provides added confidence for users on the platform.
Profile Information
This feature allows you to see the details of a person’s profile to help you determine whether or not to respond to a message, accept a connection request, trust an offer, etc. Under your profile, if you click “More” and select “About this profile” from the drop-down menu, you’ll see information like:
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- When the profile was created.
- When the profile was last updated.
- Whether the member has verified a phone number.
- Whether the member has a work e-mail associated with their account.
These are good to use to see the history of the profile for the user reaching out to you. Sure, it’s an additional step to take to connect with someone, but that could very well save you from a possible attack. A fair exchange in the grand scheme of things.
AI-Generated Profile Picture Detection
People are using AI for all sorts of things online these days. Scamming is no exception.
Scammers will use AI to generate realistic profile pictures of fake people to create fake profiles used to scam users. LinkedIn’s research showed that users were generally unable to visually distinguish real faces from these synthetically generated ones. As a result, LinkedIn partnered with Academia to develop and deploy advanced detection features that allow LinkedIn to detect AI-generated profile pictures and shut down their profiles before they cause problems.
So be vigilant as you’re browsing along on LinkedIn’s platform so that you don’t become a potential victim of phishing attempts.
It’s a great resource for business, and many businesses use this platform. But it’s important to stay secure.
Although LinkedIn has deployed these security features to help you stay more secure on their platform, those are just the first line of defense. If someone in your organization were to fall for a scam and click a bad link, would your internal security solutions be enough to protect your network?
We can help you find out. We’ll do a FREE Security Risk Assessment to help you determine if your network is vulnerable to any type of attack. To book an appointment with us, call our office us at 571-498-8208, or click here to get in contact with us today.