Researchers discover over a thousand profiles on LinkedIn of members who want to sell software to potential customers. Only it’s not about real profiles but about photos generated by AI, with a completely made up CV.
The fact was discovered by accident by Renée DiResta and Josh Goldstein of the Stanford Internet Observatory. DiResta himself got a message on Linkedin from one ‘Keenan Ramsey’ with a pitch to sell software. But she soon noticed that the profile in question was false.
It happened several times from different profiles but with the same message. It soon became clear that these were automatically generated photos. They look very realistic but are missing a few things. In this case, the woman in the photo only had one earring on, parts of her hair were blurred, and the (fictional) person in the photo is almost always very central with an unclear background. They are images made with freely available tools such as Thisperondoesnotexist.com.
Spam on social networks is a common occurrence, but in this case, it was indeed a legitimate offer, which made things even more curious. The American NPR also investigated a few cases and concluded that it is a sales ploy.
In practice, companies are contacted through a fake LinkedIn profile. Then, if they show interest, they are followed by a real salesperson. In this way, companies can knock on a door with a ‘new’ face more often, says NPR, without constantly looking for new people.
The fake profiles allegedly worked for several companies, but about sixty claimed to work for cloud communications company RingCentral. The company told NPR that it is unaware of false profiles and does not condone such practices. It does work with external companies to reach potential customers, but the practice does not seem to start from within the company itself.
LinkedIn itself also condemns the practice. It actively removes fake profiles, removing some 15 million accounts in the first six months of 2021, often as soon as they are created. But there, too, it is emphasized that this is not allowed.
The practice is admittedly relatively harmless compared to the disinformation or fraudulent spam that appears on Twitter and Facebook, among others. But it is a remarkable evolution. So, whoever is contacted on LinkedIn with a sales pitch from a very generic-looking profile, might be talking to a fake profile.
