Social Media Imposters: How to Spot a Fake on LinkedIn

Does this Venture Solutions International Operations Manager look familiar to you? Probably not.

Greg Groleau, Venture Solutions VP of Operations, reached out to Human Resources when he received a LinkedIn connection request from someone claiming to have been the International Operations Manager for Venture Solutions for the last 5 years. Two red flags stood out to Greg right away: He’d never heard of this person supposedly on his team and he doesn’t have an international operations team.

When we investigated this further, we noticed this imposter had been successful in connecting with many Venture Solutions employees on LinkedIn, even though she doesn’t actually work for Venture. Of course, we immediately asked each of our real employees to remove this individual as a connection. We also took immediate action to report the fake profile to LinkedIn, requesting profile removal after verifying this person has never been a Venture Solutions employee.

What are the motivators to create a fake profile? What was the goal?

There are many reasons why you could be approached with a fake profile or a person misrepresenting their work history on LinkedIn. Reasons could range on the milder side to downright malicious and dangerous to you, our employees, our customers, and our business.

They could be fluffing their resume during job searching, perhaps filling in employment gaps.
They could be using your connection to help boost their profile and credibility for other goals, such as sharing a message to a wider net, scoring a meeting with another company, or scamming someone else. Either way, we do not want any part of that.
You may not be a profile filler, but their actual target. Fake profile scammers will ask for your connection to build rapport with you. Venture Solutions is a good-sized company, right? How could you possibly know who everyone is? The goal is to begin engaging with you to gain access to facilities, confidential information, or money. Remember, we are in the business of protecting information and we are good at it. This may not have been an avenue on your radar, but scammers are switching up the game. Stay Alert.

What should you do if you get a connection request from an unknown Venture Solutions employee?

The easiest way to know if a connection request is a real Venture Solutions or Taylor employee is to check in Microsoft Teams or Workday. If you can easily find the employee in our database, go ahead and click that Connect button! However, if you cannot, do not accept the connection request. If they are not claiming to be a Taylor Company employee, but you still do not know them, check out the article below to learn other steps you can take to prevent compromising yourself or the company.

I’ve spotted a fake. What should I do now?

Just ask yourself, What Would Greg Groleau Do? Greg made the right move getting ahold of HR. First, he asked them to verify this was not an actual employee. HR immediately verified this person had not at any point worked for Venture Solutions and reported this fake profile to marketing. The marketing department was able to quickly block the profile and report it to LinkedIn officials using the Venture Solutions company account.

Interested in learning more ways to spot a fake? Check out this article by Forbes to learn how to safely network on LinkedIn.

Venture Employee Blog