Users on LinkedIn will soon be protected against fraudsters who pose as bogus business leaders and job recruiters owing to new security measures that are now in the process of being rolled out by the company.

Hackers and Scammers on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is very valuable for con artists and even spies because LinkedIn profiles may include sensitive facts, such as a person's current work, employment history, and a method to contact them directly,

Hackers and scammers have been observed abusing LinkedIn over the years to send out counterfeit job offers. The purpose of these scams is to trick victims into installing malware or into handing over their personal information.

According to PCMag, at the beginning of this month, security journalist Brian Krebs reported that there had been an influx of fake LinkedIn profiles created by individuals who falsely claimed to be consultants and chief data officers. These profiles were likely created for malicious reasons.

Also Read: Fake Apple Employee Accounts on LinkedIn Removed in Latest Bot Deletion

LinkedIn's Response to Combat Scams

As a direct response to this issue, LinkedIn intends to roll out various updates over the next few weeks. The upcoming changes will make it simpler for users to recognize potentially fraudulent activities.

Adding a new "About This Profile" section is one of the updates. This feature will tell you when a LinkedIn user established the profile and whether it has been verified using a phone number or a work email address.

LinkedIn Vice President Oscar Rodriguez wrote in a blog post that they hope this information will enable users to make educated choices, such as when they are considering whether to accept a connection request or reply to a certain message.

New Update: "About This Profile"

This week, the "About this profile" feature will become available on the user's personal account. Click the three dots on the menu to access this feature.

Additionally, the business intends to incorporate it into invites and communications sent within the platform. To authenticate work emails, LinkedIn is beginning with a select group of organizations, intending to extend the program eventually.

New Update: AI-generated Photo Detection

The second modification concerns the identification of AI-generated photographs on the pages of LinkedIn profiles. These AI-generated "deepfake" photos can make headshots of what seem to be genuine but are really fictional persons. Once detected, these will quickly raise a red flag that a LinkedIn account is fraudulent.

Rodriguez claimed that the company is now using its own AI-based detection technology to identify these deepfakes. It can detect "subtle image artifacts associated with the AI-based synthetic image generation process without performing facial recognition or biometric analyses," he explained.

New Update: Message Warnings

In addition, the company is developing a system that will notify users of suspicious activities in their LinkedIn personal messages.

Rodriguez warned users that communications inviting them to migrate the topic to another site might be a sign of fraud. The said system would send a warning if this happened with an option to report the content alerting the sender.

Read Also: FBI Boston Warns About Increasing Cases of Tech Support Fraud

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Trisha Kae Andrada