Jobseekers Beware! LinkedIn Sees Rise In Sophisticated Recruitment Scams

LinkedIn, a popular employment-focused social media platform, is witnessing a high number of recruitment scams in the wake of the remote working trend and widespread layoffs across the tech sector. 

What Happened: Jobseekers using LinkedIn are being taken advantage of by scammers luring them to participate in a fake recruitment process, reported Financial Times. 

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Fraudsters are going after their personal and financial information before finally defrauding money. The number of such scams has increased considerably as more and more people are looking for remote work opportunities or have been impacted by layoffs at big tech companies. 

Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of product management at LinkedIn, said, “There’s certainly an increase in the sophistication of the attacks and the cleverness.” 

He added, “We see websites being set up, we see phone numbers with a seemingly professional operator picking up the phone and answering on the company’s behalf.” 

The scams have become more realistic at convincing people using artificial intelligence. 

“In the past year, [scammers] are now using artificial intelligence to create profile photos that can fool human eyes very easily,” said Rodriguez. 

LinkedIn has started using its AI to detect “deepfake generated profile photos.” 

Why It’s Important: According to a 2021 report, it is estimated that for one legitimate remote job posting, there are around 60 scams. 

According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, in 2022, there were more than 92,000 job-related and business scams, with $367.4 million reported lost, the report noted.  

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