The root of trust is having confidence in the identity of the person you are dealing with and today, LinkedIn has announced new tools and features to help their users know they are not dealing with a fake profile.
Introducing “About this profile”
LinkedIn is adding a new “About this profile” feature that will show you when a profile was created and last updated, along with whether the member has verified a phone number and/or work email associated with their account. LinkedIn hope that viewing this information will help users make informed decisions, such as when you are deciding whether to accept a connection request or reply to a message.
Starting this week, you can find the “About this profile” feature on each LinkedIn member’s profile page, and soon you’ll see it in more places over the coming weeks, including when viewing invitations and messages. For work emails, LinkedIn’s plan is to start with a limited number of companies, but you can expect to see this expand as they add additional companies over time.
Detecting fake accounts using AI-generated profile photos
LinkedIn is seeing rapid advances in AI-based synthetic image generation technology and has created a deep learning model to better catch profiles made with this technology. AI-based image generators can create an unlimited number of unique, high-quality profile photos that do not correspond to real people. Fake accounts sometimes use these convincing, AI-generated profile photos to make their fake LinkedIn profile appear more authentic.
Their new deep-learning-based model proactively checks profile photo uploads to determine if the image is AI-generated using cutting-edge technology designed to detect subtle image artefacts associated with the AI-based synthetic image generation process without performing facial recognition or biometric analyses. This model helps increase the effectiveness of their automated anti-abuse defences to help detect and remove fake accounts before they can reach their members.
Helping stop suspicious messages
LinkedIn is adding a warning to some LinkedIn messages that include high-risk content that could impact your security. They may warn you about messages that ask you to take the conversation to another platform because that can be a sign of a scam. These warnings will also give you the choice to report the content without letting the sender know. Here’s what those messages will look like:
LinkedIn says they are rolling out new features and systems to help users make more informed decisions about members that they are interacting with and enhancing their automated systems that keep inauthentic profiles and activity off their platform. Whether you are deciding to accept an invitation, learning more about a business opportunity, or exchanging contact information, they want you to be empowered to make decisions having more signals about the authenticity of accounts.
LinkedIn is excited to start rolling out these new features right now and users can expect to see the features show up on their feed shortly.