While Twitter is tying itself in knots converting its blue tick profile verification to a paid feature and Facebook has announced a similar perk for paying customers, LinkedIn has rolled out a new free verification system.
On LinkedIn, being able to confirm a user’s credentials is arguably more important than with other social networks. As a professional careers network, it’s important to know if the person you’re talking to really does work for the company they claim to represent. The free verification system aims to achieve just that.
“Through all these new, free features, we’re helping give you the confidence that who you’re connecting with and the content you come across is trusted and authentic,” Oscar Rodriguez, Vice President of Product Management at LinkedIn, wrote in a Pulse post on the site.
There are two ways that your employer can be verified. The first is if they’re one of the “dozens of participating companies” signed up for the Microsoft Entra-powered pilot.
The second more widespread method is via a business-issued email address, which supports “over 4,000 companies.” When you enter your work email address, you’ll receive a six-digit code. You can then use this to confirm it’s you on your LinkedIn profile. You’ll then receive a tick on your profile to prove you do indeed work where you claim.
LinkedIn is also working on a way to verify personal, rather than corporate, identity. But this is currently in only the US as it uses Clear, which relies on a government-issued ID and an American phone number. Clear is a registered traveller program that allows members to quickly verify their identities at touchless, biometric security kiosks.
It’s possible that this, and other forms of workplace ID, will be available to more users in time, however. “We’re continuing to expand eligibility and availability, and new types of verifications may become available in the future,” the LinkedIn support page on verification explains.
It’s certainly a welcome addition to a platform which is increasingly dealing with its fair share of recruitment scams. These involve criminals stealing personal and financial information from targets looking for work.
“There’s certainly an increase in the sophistication of the attacks and the cleverness,” Rodriguez told the Financial Times last month. “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.”
Such labour-intensive scams could be just the tip of the iceberg too. Fraudsters are apparently using AI to generate plausible-seeming phishing scams.
Verification will hopefully help users tell legitimate opportunities from such scams more easily. But until the optional verification process becomes widespread, would-be jobseekers should keep their wits about them, and do their due diligence. Remember, if an opportunity seems too good to be true, it probably is.
