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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
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A LinkedIn spokesperson said that “fake jobs or fake profiles are a violation of our terms of service. Our teams use multiple automated techniques, coupled with human reviews and member reporting to take swift action to remove fake jobs and companies, as well as prevent them from being created. You can see the latest on our work in this area in our Transparency Report.""If members do suspect a company or job on LinkedIn is fake, they can easily report it by contacting us here and we will move quickly to investigate,” the spokesperson said in an email. The job market keeps struggling because of COVID-19, with almost 7 percent of Americans out of a job, and unemployment claims continue to go up. This presents a good opportunity for scammers to exploit people who are out of a job—though it underlines how ruthless fraudsters can be. Last week, Nidhi Razdan, a well-known TV journalist in India, revealed that someone impersonated Harvard University representatives and offered her a job as an Associate Professor of Journalism. Months after accepting the fraudulent job offer, she reached out to Harvard University authorities and realized the job offer never actually existed. Scammers are everywhere, but there haven't been many examples of LinkedIn frauds, at least not sophisticated enough to impersonate real employees. As usual, be wary of unsolicited messages and don't share any personal or financial information unless you are sure you're talking to the right person.Do you know of any similar scams or frauds? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, OTR chat at lorenzofb@jabber.ccc.de, or email lorenzofb@vice.com