Fraudsters hit LinkedIn with recruitment scam wave amid tech layoffs

According to the Financial Times, phony recruitments are being run by scammers pretending to be employers on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn.

New Delhi: Professional networking major LinkedIn has been hit by several state-of-the-art recruitment scams after massive tech layoffs, and fraudsters are cheating those sacked by offering them jobs that do not exist.

According to the Financial Times, phony recruitments are being run by scammers pretending to be employers on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn.

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“There’s certainly an increase in the sophistication of the attacks and the cleverness,” Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn’s vice president of product management, was quoted as saying in the report.

The platform has sought to block tens of millions of fake accounts in recent months, as regulators warn of a spike in job-related frauds.

Cyber security company Zscaler recently described a scam that targeted job aspirants, where fraudsters approached people through LinkedIn’s direct messaging feature InMail.

“They also created Skype profiles with the picture of the real recruiter from the companies to conduct interviews as well,” Deepen Desai, vice-president of security research at Zscaler, was quoted as saying.

The fraudsters are now using artificial intelligence (AI) to create profile photos that can fool human eyes very easily.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently said there were more than 92,000 job-related and business scams in 2022, with $367.4 million reported stolen.

“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. We see a move to more sophisticated deception,” Rodriguez was quoted as saying.

Thousands of tech employees have lost their jobs at Big Tech and other companies in the global macroeconomic conditions.