Oct 22, 2022 21:00:00

Accounts of self-proclaimed Apple employees and self-proclaimed Amazon employees are deleted from LinkedIn all at once

On the business-specific SNS 'LinkedIn', you can describe your work history and appeal your career, but there are also fake accounts operated by users and BOTs who post false information. It is clear that nearly half of the accounts calling themselves `` Apple employees '' and `` Amazon employees '' have been deleted all at once from such LinkedIn.

Battle with Bots Prompts Mass Purge of Amazon, Apple Employee Accounts on LinkedIn – Krebs on Security

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/10/battle-with-bots-prompts-mass-purge-of-amazon-apple-employee-accounts-on-linkedin/

Jay Piño , who is involved in the development of recruitment-related systems, noticed that the accounts of self-proclaimed Apple employees and Amazon employees were deleted all at once. Mr. Piño analyzes data on LinkedIn and tracks the number of users who claim to be employees of dozens of companies, including Apple and Amazon. Looking at the image below, which summarizes the number of users who call themselves Amazon employees, 1,249,848 users called themselves Amazon employees at 11 am on October 10, 2022, but the number of users at 11 pm on the same day. You can see that has decreased to 838,674 people.

The transition in the number of users who call themselves Apple employees is as follows. The number of users has decreased by more than half from 11:00 am on October 10, 2022 to 11:00 pm on the same day.

It is unclear whether the above account mass deletion was carried out in response to complaints from Apple or Amazon, or whether it was voluntarily carried out by LinkedIn, but since the timing of the account mass deletion is consistent, LinkedIn voluntarily deleted It is considered to be a good response.

The 'sudden decline in the number of users' discovered by Mr. Pinho is not limited to self-proclaimed Apple employees and self-proclaimed Amazon employees. For example, on September 4, 2022, the number of accounts claiming to be employees of the major virtual currency exchange “Binance” decreased from 7846 to 6102.

Security expert Brian Krebs points out that the large number of fake accounts on LinkedIn are likely to be used for fraud such as ``pig killing'' and to steal personal information from companies.