How to report fake or misleading LinkedIn profiles has become an increasingly difficult endeavor.

In a previous post, I wrote about how pervasive fake profiles are on LinkedIn and how difficult LinkedIn makes it to report them, for good reasons, they stopped caring a long time ago about the quality of user experience to focus on growing user numbers ( regardless of legitimacy) prior to their IPO

Another issue, when you created and think you “own” a business or brand page, is controlling who shows up as an employee on your page and that can have implications when it comes to your brand and/or reputation.  It turns out you do not control that information.

In any case, finding a way to contact what LinkedIn calls “customer service” has become a feat in itself, but the response is probably as frustrating as trying to contact them.

There is however an easier way to report a fake profile, if you look in the right place but you have to dig into the user’s profile in places you would not think about right off the bat, here are the steps

First  go to the profile

Chances are the profile will only have a remote connection to you and contacting the user will require you to click on the arrow next to “send and Inmail”, the last place you want to click since LinkedIn charges $10 per Inmail

You will have two options, “find references” and “report”

From the stand point of its shareholders, LinkedIn has little vested interest in weeding out fake profiles, imagine what would happen if they had to weed out hundreds of thousands of fake users, but we need to keep trying, especially when the misleading or fake profile has the potential to be harmful to your brand or business or engage your liability in a negative way.

I can already hear you next question, how do you identify fake profiles, you will find more information on that subject here