LinkedIn security issue: are fake profiles damaging your company?

I will be writing an article once a month on social media. This month I’m looking at the issue of identity security and protecting your organisation’s brand on LinkedIn.

About LinkedIn

If you find yourself asking the question “what is LinkedIn?” you may also need to ask yourself where you have been for the past few months, or even years. No offence.

LinkedIn boasts a base of over 80 million users. It’s the largest professional social network in the world, differentiating itself from the powerhouse that is Facebook (500+ million users).

LinkedIn and the organisation

LinkedIn’s ability to affiliate a user to their place of work has made its adoption by organisations very attractive, and indeed increasingly essential, as employees increasingly must represent their place of work in an online universe. Unfortunately there is a flaw in LinkedIn’s setup that must strike fear into the hearts and minds of marketers and business owners alike.

Here’s the issue...

We received a notification on Wednesday from a client who received an abusive message (via LinkedIn) from a person supposedly employed at Advanced Resource Managers (ARM). Upon immediate investigation it was apparent that a user had set up a fake profile on LinkedIn pretending to represent an ARM employee. The only way to resolve this issue was to log the issue via LinkedIn’s customer service email response service (getting a number for LinkedIn seems impossible). The reply took overnight to come in, during which time the damage could have escalated out of control. Fortunately, the user was removed from affiliation with ARM and apologies were sent to the client involved. Thanks to quick communication and response the client understood the situation. The ease of this kind of attack is particularly worrying.

The solution?

Surely a validation process must be put in place requiring approval for any user to become affiliated with an organisation, perhaps via an official company email account, or an email and telephone validation process (as used with Googles Places). I’m surprised to find little information on the matter when browsing online. Has anyone else received examples of this type of threat to their organisation? I’d be interested to learn more and share best practice.

eMarketing executive

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ARM

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