LinkedIn is adding a set of trust and verification features aimed at fake professional identities, the company says, including a way for colleagues and classmates to confirm that they shared a workplace or a study period with another member. The checks lean on people and company Pages that have already been verified to back up what a profile claims.
The vouching feature is narrow by design. It confirms an affiliation only, and LinkedIn says it does not speak to someone's ability or amount to a recommendation. Admins of verified company Pages get a separate control: they can strip a false affiliation claim from the people and search results tied to their Page. That action does not delete the profile or erase the claim itself, so the underlying account survives.
LinkedIn is also testing a requirement that members verify their workplace before they can associate themselves with a company Page, with a work email address given as one example of how that could work. The company is also widening where members can display LinkedIn verified identity off the platform, adding Truecaller and PeerSpot to a roster that already includes Adobe and UserTesting.
The push addresses a familiar scam pattern. Fraudsters can stand up a polished company Page for a startup that does not exist, or pose as recruiters and job listings to draw in applicants. The new checks are most useful when the supposed employer is a real, recognized business, because they can help a job seeker confirm that a recruiter actually belongs to it. When the employer itself is part of the con, the same signals do much less.
LinkedIn acknowledges that AI has made fabricated professional identities more polished, while Malwarebytes Labs warns that criminals may try to abuse verification signals by using stolen accounts, gaming the checks, or assembling networks of fraudulent profiles. Verification can make deception costlier, the security firm says, though it cannot replace plain skepticism.
For job seekers, the practical advice is to treat verification as one useful signal rather than proof. Malwarebytes Labs advises checking whether a recruiter is affiliated with a recognized company, visiting the employer's website independently, and confirming that contact details line up with the job listing. It also flags several warning signs: unsolicited approaches, pressure to move the conversation off LinkedIn, requests to install software or hand over identity documents, and offers that arrive before any credible interview process.
The announcement lands in a stretch of scam and malware reporting. Earlier this month, researchers described the Kothamine Agent remote access trojan, which supports more than 30 commands and has been linked to malicious npm packages, while a fake Claude Max giveaway was found harvesting Google login details, with Claude paid plans starting at $20 a month. Other recent items covered a zero-day in Meta's Muse AI assistant that could turn it into a Mac backdoor and a cheap toolkit behind more than 100 subscription websites impersonating names such as GPT-6 Astra, DaVinci Resolve, PixAI and OpenCut.
Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn's VP of Product, framed the effort as a long-term bet: "We’ve been invested in [verification] because we believe that authenticity will be the single most valuable currency on the internet."
