Spotted in the United States, “the recruitment scam on LinkedIn” is beginning to worry this side of the Atlantic. Resulting in a whole false recruitment process, this scam has notably gained momentum with the democratization of teleworking linked to the pandemic.
Remote work inspires scammers. “The recruitment scam on LinkedIn” has multiplied in recent weeks with the democratization of teleworking linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, the recent wave of layoffs within technology companies and the development of artificial intelligence.
The company specializing in cybersecurity Zscaler alerted on this scam targeting a dozen American companies last month, according to a survey carried out and published on Sunday February 26 by the Financial Times. And the fact remains that in an increasingly connected and global labor market, France may well not be spared.
fake companies and fake interviews
Concretely, to achieve their ends, the thugs have developed an elaborate scheme. The latter generally contact their targets via InMail, LinkedIn’s messaging feature, before setting up a fake recruitment process.
To do this, scammers create websites copying those of companies specializing in job search, such as Zscaler, Intellectsoft and Zuora. Once contact has been established, they invite the victims to fill in their personal data on the site, before conducting remote interviews on Skype. They even go so far as to create Skype profiles by copying the photo of the real recruiter from the companies that job seekers are applying for.
“We see websites being created, we see phone numbers with a person picking up the phone and answering on behalf of the business. We are witnessing an evolution towards a more sophisticated deception”, analyzes Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of product management at LinkedIn, for the American newspaper.
Through this process, the scammers were able to extract sensitive banking data from their victims. In particular, they asked their targets for money for computer equipment or training to be reimbursed.
The amount of fraud on the rise since 2020
According to figures from the Federal Trade Commission, nearly 100,000 job market scams were recorded in the United States in 2021 and 2022.
The amount of these scams has not stopped climbing in the country since 2020, with an estimate made at the time of around 150 million dollars, or more than 140 million euros. They then cost nearly 200 million dollars in 2021 then 367.4 million dollars in 2022, i.e. 190 million euros and 344.2 million euros respectively.
How to protect yourself from this scam?
To protect yourself from this scam, the advice provided by the experts is to ensure by all means the identity of your interlocutor. LinkedIn has implemented certain features to limit this phenomenon, such as a dated indication on the use of a profile or new alert messages.
In a press release relayed by the American newspaper, LinkedIn announced the blocking of 22 million fake accounts between January and June 2022. Of these, 75% were stopped during account registration.