Are There Fake Profiles on LinkedIn?
I have seen many people complain about the existence of fake profiles on LinkedIn. Well, I had always found profiles that seemed fishy in their lack of detail, but I am always of the “innocent until proven guilty” type and could not cry foul without absolute proof. Today I have that proof.
Because I am an open networker with a lot of connections, I tend to get my fair share of invites. Today I received several invites from people that I thought were fake, and I was able to, in essence, prove so after I connected by looking at their email address. Here is what they had in common:
- Their headline profile had either a “(LION)” or a “(TopLinked.com)” notation in them
- Their titles were either recruiters at very large and famous American corporations or owners of their own recruiting firms
- They all have amassed over 500 connections
- Although they indicate that they are “LIONs”, none of them were a member of ANY group, including TopLinked.com
- Their email addresses were numbered as in **1@x.y.com, **2@x.y.com, **3@x.y.com
So these are fake profiles that 1) pretended they were in large companies and in the recruiting industry to fool you and 2) pretended that they were open networkers in their headline profile to attract connections from other open networkers.
Why do fake profiles exist on LinkedIn? I recently wrote about someone who wanted to sell their LinkedIn account. Authentic email addresses from legitimate professionals, many of who make over six figures annually, are a prized commodity for many a company who want to market their goods to this demographic. These “spammers” or whoever you want to label them as are getting smarter in their methods and are being more successful, proven by the fact that they have already acquired over 500 connections from others.
Now, the minute one of these people putting up these fake profiles reads this blog post they will change their strategies and do something else. And there is nothing I can do about it. But I hope this is a wake up call to not only you all but to LinkedIn as well as to the lurking security issues out there. Most notably it shows that anyone can say they are a member of a company and then have the ability to connect with other “colleagues” without knowing their email address. It is in the best interest of each company, if not LinkedIn, that they are monitoring this. LinkedIn needs to come up with a mechanism to provide the HR organizations of companies the ability to filter people who say they work at a company, similar to the permission needed to join a LinkedIn group.
Will this make the fake profile issue go away? Absolutely not. But it may give a message to the “spammers” or whoever they are that they will not get automatic access to large company databases.
The other issue is for open networkers. Just because someone shows a “LION” or “TopLinked.com” membership does not mean that they are a true open networker. They could be here today and IDKing you tomorrow. Only connect with authentic people. Period.
I am always interested in having a conversation with LinkedIn about how to better their service. I believe that us open networkers with large connections are in an ideal position to be able to monitor fake profiles by committee and report back to LinkedIn. I welcome the creation of such an “Open Networkers for LinkedIn Committee” and can nominate quite a few great connectors for this purpose. Just call me and consider it done.
Neal Schaffer is recognized as a leader in helping businesses and professionals embrace and strategically leverage the potential of social media. An award-winning published author, frequent speaker at social media events, and an avid blogger, Neal is President of 
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[...] You Spot a Fake LinkedIn Profile? This is actually a follow-up to a post I did recently on Are There Fake Profiles on LinkedIn? At that time I found proof of a few people with fake profiles that I shared with everyone. And [...]
Yes, there are fake profiles on Linkedin. In fact, here are examples of af few of about 700 profiles that all share the identical content except for the name, job title and company:
Michelle Garcia
Michael Rodriguez
Brian Clark
William Lee
Ruth Garcia
Paul Garcia
Betty Lee
Sandra Lewis
Kevin Clarke
Elizabeth Rodriguez
Patricia Robinson
Michael Garcia
Rodriguez, Steven
Edwards, Susan
Garcia, Nancy
Johnson, James
Lewis, Steven
Garcia, Linda
Thomas, Laura
The purpose of these profiles is to market a supposedly free webinar with a $149 value at this website:
Social Media Magic
http://www.socialmediamagic.com/vip/
The Co-founder of Social Media Magic, Stephen Jones (who knows if this is even his real name) should be ashamed of himself.
The only way to stop this is to:
- report it immediately to your Group Owner or Moderator whenever you see a post for it.
- file a complaint with Linkedin through “Help”
- call their phone number Toll Free: 888-500-2380
and demand to speak to Stephen Jones (they won’t let you) and leave a message complaing about their fake profiles and spam – if enough people call and jam their lines, they may get a taste of their own medicine and stop
This is what the fake profile looks like:
Connections 0 connections
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I have withheld my name as I don’t want to become a target for these unscrupulous spammers.
Thank you, whoever you are, for this information. I have not personally confirmed this, but should anyone confirm that the above is correct or incorrect, please inform us all on this comment board. Thank you!
RT @TriumphCISO: Fake Profiles on #LinkedIn? Beware, verify ask for company & contact info. – http://is.gd/1Z3OR #cybersecurity #fraud
Boy….you seem pissed off at socialmediamagic.com? Here are some more names which are fakes …
Becky Bornstein
Mitchell Beck
Sean Martinez-Dantonet
Shawn (Teresa) McCollum
Stephen Herman
Jeff Weidner
Craig Laday
The biggest fake is John Souza himself who hides behind bogus companies. Beware of socialmediamarketing.com!
Hi Angela,
Well, I never mentioned any company name in my blog post. It was someone who commented after my blog who took the liberty of mentioning names. Either way, it goes to show that sometimes those who say they are “experts” in social media are sometimes the biggest fakes!
- Neal
I am Sean Martinez-Dantonet !!! and there is nothing Fake about me or my practice! it is very unprofessional, not to mention just wrong to make statements about people based on some off the wall assumptions! it seems to me that you are defaming others at random in order to adversity your own business. shame on you. Sean Martinez-Dantonet BFRP
Thank you for your comment Sean. The person who claimed that you were a fake was not myself but someone who commented on my blog post. I urge you to try to contact her directly to try to clarify things. If I see further false claims by commenters I will consider blocking them or removing their comments.
- Neal
Thank you. Sean Martinez-Dantonet
Fake profiles on LinkedIn and how they are deployed to game/spam the system. http://bit.ly/c51zF1 #MProfsLink
Thanks for the ariticle – I have been trying to figure out why fake people indicate they work at our company. The LinkedIn system to remove them requires a comment submission and a screen shot to be delivered to LinkedIn customer service, and is broken today it seems as well so there is no way to remove this person that I have never heard of how now is saying he is my SEO. I'm thinking I either a) get our software monitoring for people joining so we immediately know about it at least, or b) stop having our company profile available on LinkedIn.
Hey Darren, Thank you so much for your comment from the company perspective. I thought that LinkedIn had a way where you, as the company, could flag profiles that were not members of your company, but I may be mistaken. Either way, this is a serious issue that only LinkedIn can help you resolve. Taking your company profile off of LinkedIn serves a disservice to everyone, so I would try to negotiate this with LinkedIn. When you say they require a “comment submission,” does this mean that you can only kick this person out of your LinkedIn Company Profile if they comment on a LinkedIn Group? I don't see the connection…would love to hear more about it so that all of us can learn from it.
Thanks again for sharing!
@NealSchaffer
Hi Neal, yes there is a way but what I mean by a “comment submission” is that it is not automated; you have to use a form to send a textual description of who and why to remove to a person to a customer support person at LinkedIn, including a screen shot of the person on your company profile. It seems everytime I look there's someone new that has attached themself to our company. When I tried the method described above yesterday, the submit button was broken and simply came back with an obscure error message, so I had to leave them attached to our company. My plan now is to watch my company profile constantly; its too bad I then have to plead the case to someone each time someone misrepresents that they work here when they don't.
Hi Darren, Well, from LinkedIn's perspective, unless they allow you to add a company to your profile only using an email address with the domain of that company, I don't think that there's much you can do other than the method described above. That being said, LinkedIn should make it convenient and easy for you to submit, which doesn't sound like is happening. Sorry that LinkedIn hasn't made life easier for you…hopefully they will read this comment and heed the call to action.
Hi Darren, Well, from LinkedIn's perspective, unless they allow you to add a company to your profile only using an email address with the domain of that company, I don't think that there's much you can do other than the method described above. That being said, LinkedIn should make it convenient and easy for you to submit, which doesn't sound like is happening. Sorry that LinkedIn hasn't made life easier for you…hopefully they will read this comment and heed the call to action.